


Second Chances and Virtual Families

by normalisoverrated



Series: Second Chances and Families [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Childhood, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton Feels, Clint Barton Has Issues, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Found Family, Gen, Growing Up, Humor, Kid Skye | Daisy Johnson, Maria Hill & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Has Issues, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Natasha and Clint can't cook to save their lives, Parent Natasha Romanov, Phil Coulson Has the Patience of a Saint, Pranks, Pre-Avengers (2012), Protective Clint Barton, Protective Natasha Romanov, Protective Phil Coulson, SHIELD Family, Skye | Daisy Johnson Feels, Spidermom - Freeform, Spies & Secret Agents, Strike Team Delta, Strike Team Delta Origin Story, Team as Family, lots of fluff, so many pranks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:29:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 163,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23281771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/normalisoverrated/pseuds/normalisoverrated
Summary: “The ceremony is necessary” - Madame B, Age of Ultron“The one thing that might matter more than a mission” - Natasha Romanoff, Age of UltronNatalia Romanova is known as the Black Widow for a reason. The youngest and best graduate from the Red-Room, she is ruthless, vicious, efficient, loyal. She is the sharpest knife in the hand of the motherland. She knows her orders, knows her duty, does not question it.Until she does.Madame was right, the ceremony was necessary, because her daughter is the one thing more important than any mission.Sort of part of a series, but not really. Can definitely be read as a stand-alone. A different strike team delta origin story.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Clint Barton & Phil Coulson & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton/Laura Barton, Maria Hill & Natasha Romanov, Natasha Romanov & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Phil Coulson & Skye | Daisy Johnson
Series: Second Chances and Families [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638475
Comments: 257
Kudos: 289





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> When I wrote SC+FFF I hadn't watched season 4 of agents of shield yet, and when I did watch it I got caught by the idea of the framework. This started as a kind of 'what if' story. What if Natasha and Daisy went into the framework and each had a regret taken away? What if Natasha didn't leave Daisy in Hunan as a baby? What would have changed?
> 
> For new readers/readers who haven't seen season 4 of Agents of Shied: The framework is a kind of virtual reality, but a seriously realistic one that is basically like reality when you're inside it (partly because you lose your memory of the real world). So most of the story, except for the very beginning bit, is set in the framework and so separate from the previous fics in this series. All you need to know is that Daisy is Natasha's daughter, who she left with her father (a target she'd slept with) in a village in China, and was reunited with later in life (after having thought she was dead for 20 years). Just skip to the bold line break halfway down and start reading from there. 
> 
> I've been writing this for ages around my university work, and it's not anywhere near finished yet, but I think enough is written to start posting (And I'm going a bit stir-crazy with coronavirus and figure other people probably are too, so I may as well provide something to do for ten minutes!).
> 
> Please review, and tell me what you like/don't like; I love reading them!

“Can I try? Please, please Auntie Daisy, pleeeeaaaaaseeee?”

Nat bit back her huff of amusement as Julie fixed her best puppy-dog expression on Daisy, wriggling with excited hope in her arms. She could actually _see_ the willpower it was taking her Pauchok to refuse.

“No Julie, it’s not a toy. It’s a training exercise.”

“But I train too! I did 30 jumping jacks this morning!” The little inhuman tried to argue.

Julie had as well, she’d been ‘training’ with the caterpillars for ages, doing jumping jacks and running around pretending to do what the grown-ups were doing. The four and a half year old seemed to have boundless energy, or at least, significantly more than anyone else tended to have (the only reason Andy managed life with two inhuman children was the army of uncles and aunts usually on hand), and the residents of the Cocoon were entirely happy to encourage her to burn energy. This did not however, mean that Julie was allowed a ‘turn’ at the super-technical, scarily realistic virtual-reality that FitzSimmons, a new science recruit Radcliffe and his invention AIDA (which, after Ultron, pretty much everyone had been initially _furious_ to hear about, even after both Vision and Wanda had oked her) had made. They had all agreed, including Radcliffe, that only adults should go in, especially as the framework (made with the help of a book that gave even Nat the creeps) had only been tested a few times (Nat had been in once before, this was her Pauchok’s first) and they weren’t sure they’d worked all the kinks out yet. That and it was almost frightening how realistic it was inside, and no one though it was a good idea to let one of the kids into it.

This was the second round of testing of the framework. The first round of testing had involved one person going in and looking around, interacting with people and completing a ‘mission’. Now they were trying it with two people, and seeing if and how putting two minds in it at once changed things. The plan was to then slowly increase the amount of people going in at once until an entire team could go in and run extensive training missions. Nat knew that Daisy’s caterpillars were especially looking forward to this, as there was only so much they could let their powers loose in the Cocoon to train. The framework would be entirely different, and they could finally do more ‘full-on’ training.

Which led Nat here, watching Daisy hug her niece before disappearing into a virtual world for a few hours. She couldn’t say she was delighted that Daisy was going to have a part in the testing process, but she had come to (grudgingly) accept that her Pauchok was going to take dozens of risks that Nat would rather she didn’t, so when Daisy had volunteered, she’d just volunteered to be the other person.

Finally, Daisy convinced a (now pouting) Julie to let go of her and Ben led her out of the room.

“Ready Pauchok?” she asked.

“Yeah. You guys ready?”

Radcliffe and AIDA nodded from where they had been triple-checking everything on both the screen and the headsets. Jemma waved them towards the two beds laid side-by-side and Nat lay down on one, grudgingly letting Jemma connect her to some monitors. She still didn’t like anything related to medical.

Next to her, Daisy nervously let Fitz connect her to another set of monitors.

“So, you both know what you’re doing right?” Fitz asked

“Yes Fitz” her Pauchok said, somehow sounding both nervous and impatient at once.

“Well, run me through it again anyway.”

Even Nat wanted to huff at that, they’d run through it three times already.

“We go in, we stay together, talk to five people, press the button that takes us out of the framework, and compare notes to see if we got the same information from them.” Daisy recited, sounding seriously bored.

“Right, ok, right” Fitz said, fiddling with the headset he was holding before holding it out to Daisy. Nat took hers from Radcliffe at the same time.

“Best if you put them on together” Radcliffe suggested.

“On the count of three Mama?” Daisy asked, and Nat nodded.

“One, two,” Nat held her head up a little and positioned the headset “three.” She put it on, and just like last time, everything around her changed.

In an instant the sights, sounds, smells and everything else of the Playground lab disappeared, and Nat found herself in a bustling market in Spain, her Pauchok next to her, staring round open-mouthed.

“Wow” Daisy breathed.

“You’ll catch flies if you don’t close your mouth.” Nat teased. Her Pauchok reddened and closed her mouth with an audible click, then opened it again.

“It’s just, it’s so...”

“I know.” Nat said. She was about to say more when AIDA’s voice sounded around them.

“Agent Romanoff, Agent Mayson, I need you to think of something you regret.”

What? That wasn’t part of the plan. But, automatically, Nat thought of Hunan, of the ransacked house she’d found all those years ago and the horror of the knowledge that she’d left her Pauchok there. Of the soul deep pain and how she’d regretted, more than anything in her life, her failure to protect her Pauchok. Of how she still regretted, even to this day, leaving her daughter with her father.

Next to her, Daisy drew in a sudden sharp breath, and whatever she was thinking of, it made her hand tighten in hers.

“Thank you Agents’.” AIDA’s voice said, and then the whole world changed around them again, but this time it was different.

This time, when she opened her eyes, Daisy wasn’t there.

This time, when she opened her eyes, she was standing in a barely-familiar house, standing over a makeshift crib and feeling sobs building up in her throat.

This time, an instant later, she forgot.

This time, Natasha Romanoff forgot all about the framework, all about what had happened in the over 27 years since she went back to Hunan to leave her daughter somewhere safe. This time, Natasha didn’t know that the world around her wasn’t real, all she knew was that someone had almost shot her daughter, and she had to keep her safe.

\--------------

*Meanwhile back in the lab*

“ _Hey!_ What’re you doing?”

“Yeah, that definitely wasn’t part of the plan!”

“Relax” Radcliffe soothed “We’re just trying something.”

“We’re not supposed to be trying something! We’re supposed to be following the plan testing already risky new technology!” Fitz snapped

“The plan was stupid, we already know what happens when we put someone into a simulation we make. We need to test the limits. Lets see what happens when they create their own simulation.”

“Create their own...are you hearing yourself Radcliffe? This is mad! May’s going to kill you!”

“Now, Fitz, there’s no need for her to know until they’re safely back.”

“She’ll kill you anyway!”

“Guys? What’s the framework doing?”

Both scientists spun around to look at Simmons, who was looking at the computer monitor with a look of deep concern. Simmons turned the screen to show the others.

“Oh, now that’s fascinating! The framework appears to be evolving around them!”

“ _Evolving!_ Make it stop!”

“That would be inadvisable.” AIDA interjected

“ _What? Why?_ ”

“This is now their reality, to interfere with it from the outside risks irreparably damaging their brains.”

“ _ **WHAT?**_ ”

“Now, it’s not that bad, AIDA is exaggerating, but we should probably just leave it until they press the exit button.”

“Sir, they appear to have left the piece of code you refer to as an exit button behind.”

“What? They can’t have left it behind!” Radcliffe said, but there was starting to be an edge of panic to his voice.

“It appears that they can, and have. It is difficult to tell for sure as I am losing their code.”

This time all three scientists, all now definitely panicking, shouted _“_ _ **WHAT?**_ ”

“W-What does that even mean? How can you lose their code?” Fitz asked

“The framework is evolving around them, I cannot keep total track of it.”

“But if you’ve lost their code and they’ve lost their way out...” Simmons said, the panic in her voice edging on hysterical.

“They could be stuck in there forever!” Fitz completed.

“No, no, we can just switch it off.”

“To switch off the framework would be to irreparably damage their minds.” AIDA reminded them.

For a moment, all four were utterly, terrifyingly silent.

“When do Coulson and May get back from their radio-silent op?” Radcliffe asked finally.

“Two days” AIDA supplied.

“It would be best if we fix this before then.” Radcliffe said.

“How?” FitzSimmons snapped at the same time, identical panic in their voices.

A long, awful silence fell over the lab.

“Anyone?” Simmons asked weakly “Please?”

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**

**\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------**

Natalia Romanova wasn’t called the Black Widow for nothing. She was not known for caring about anyone or anything. She manipulated her marks without a single care and dispatched her targets quickly and efficiently. Going on missions from the tender age of 12, she had developed a reputation for mercilessness and ruthlessness. Becoming the youngest red room graduate at the age of 16 her reputation had only expanded and grown as she earned the title of Black Widow. She was the knife in the motherlands defence, turned on its enemies because of her unflinching capability. She had never turned from a mission, never flinched from what needed to be done.

So why did she hesitate over her daughter’s crib?

She was a danger to her Pauchok. Her Pauchok was a danger to her capability to serve the motherland. She had to leave her little Pauchok here. It was what needed to be done.

This should not be difficult. She had put a bullet in her sister’s skull once. Looked into the terrified eyes of the girl she had danced with in the Bolshoi, trained with in the red-room, slept near, ate near. Looked into her sister’s terrified eyes, heard the command. _I am marble_. She’d pulled the trigger.

This should be nothing.

She is Natalia Alianovna Romanova. She serves the motherland. She is the loyal blade that protects the comrades of the sprawling motherland of the Soviet Union. _She is marble_.

She reaches a hand to run her fingers against her Pauchok’s smooth cheek, remembering. _The ceremony is necessary._

Natalia understands now. The ceremony _is_ necessary. Her Pauchok has become more important than her mission, more important than the motherland. Her Pauchok is more important than providing the red-room with fresh recruits. Her Pauchok is important enough to keep safe, even from the motherland.

The disloyalty frightens Natalia. She will be punished when she returns, she must be, to remind her of her loyalty. She knows this is right. But she also knows she will never say a word about her Pauchok.

But she has to leave now. Now before her Pauchok wakes and looks at her with her baby eyes. Now before her Pauchok cries for milk and to be held. Now before her father returned. A man Natalia isn’t even sure has given her a real name, but who looked at Daisy like the greatest treasure on earth. Who wouldn’t be so stupid and careless as to almost get her Pauchok shot.

The memory scares Natalia more than she can remember being scared by anything in years. More than she was cautious of bullets and blades, more than she was nervous of being punished. Fear is weakness. _I am marble_ she reminded herself. Pauchok is just a baby, she is not yet fully a person, she is nothing to be attached to. Love is for children. She is not a child, and her Pauchok will be loved.

Even so, she creeps on soundless feet through the house to check on Jia Ying, delaying leaving. She peers noiselessly through the keyhole, and her eyes widen in surprise to find the man is still up, sitting on his bed as if he is waiting for something. For an instant Natalia thinks she’s been made, but then strange blue light fills the room, and there is another man standing infront of Jia Ying. Natalia allows her eyes to widen in shock. So the rumours she’d originally been sent to investigate were true, Jia Ying was connected with powered people.

“Gordon” Jia Ying greeted, his voice familiar and welcoming, and Natalia had heard enough.

Trouble came to those with enhancements or powers like flies to honey. She didn’t need to know anything else about the two men in the bedroom; her Pauchok wasn’t safe here.

She packed up everything she had brought, strapped her sleeping baby to her chest, and before the first rays of the sun hit the village she was slipping through the streets of the nearest city, making for the freight train cars. Two days later she left the country as she arrived, unnoticed, with a three month old infant tucked close to her chest.

\--------------

At first, everything continued as it had, she dispatched two more targets in the wide mission she was set on, now taking every necessary precaution and dozens of unnecessary ones. She makes sure her Pauchok is far away when she takes down her targets. She leaves her in orphanages, breaking in to tuck her into a crib and coming back hours or days later to steal her back, there and gone without a sound. Her Pauchok starts to cry whenever she leaves her sight, but Natalia must serve the motherland, and she must take out her targets, so she must leave her Pauchok for a time.

She doesn’t think about the stashes of money and documents she empties from safe houses as she passes. She will leave her Pauchok somewhere safe, she will leave the money with her, to ensure she is cared for. There is no other reason. Natalia is the Black Widow. She is loyal to the motherland. She doesn’t think about the favours she calls in, the contacts she sends messages to, the new covers she was creating. She is more effective creating her own covers, her own protection. She is sharpening the knife in the motherlands hand.

She is giving herself options. She is disloyal.

No.

She is the Black Widow. She is the sharpest knife in the motherland’s hand. She is the death of the enemies of the Soviet utopia. She is Natalia Alianovna Romanova and she is loyal.

She isn’t sure why she thinks of children's films when she remembers she is loyal.

The last month of her mission passes, and Natalia doesn’t return. She hasn’t finished her mission, there are more of the ring left. Smaller members, but dangerous. They could restart the ring, continue to sell Soviet secrets to capitalist pigs. She is protecting the motherland.

Her Pauchok has learned to smile. It is not something Daisy has learned from her, Natalia knows, but nevertheless her little Pauchok’s lips stretch and widen into a gummy smile when she wakes up and sees her face, and Natalia finds herself smiling in response each time. She finds that if she wriggles her fingers lightly over her baby’s tummy when she changes her, her little Pauchok makes strange, delighted sounds and wriggles, and its the best sound Natalia has ever heard.

She sees healthy, well-fed, cared for children in the orphanages she sneaks into, tries to convince herself to leave her Pauchok; to separate her innocent little girl from her danger. But her Pauchok cries when she puts her down, and smiles when picked up, and how can Natalia really know anywhere is safe? After-all, there is no-where in the Soviet Union the KGB and the red-room don’t have ears, and how can Natalia leave her innocent baby alone in the selfish perils of capitalist west? Capitalists would sell their own flesh for money, Natalia knows this, it is what makes it so important to protect her soviet comrades. How much more easily would they turn on her baby? Her Pauchok is only safe in the east. But the east was not safe either.

Natalia knows that is not true. She knows to even think that is disloyal.

Why does she think of snow white when she remembers this?

Another month passes. She is running out of targets but when she hangs around a pub (one of a certain type of pub frequented by spies, assassins and informants) she hears of a man looking to have another taken out, he is offering to pay well for it. Her Pauchok could do with the money. She takes the job.

Her Pauchok is five months old now, and growing fast, Natalia has stolen collections of new clothes for her, and she’s stopped leaving her at orphanages. Someone might notice the reoccurrence of a baby girl left and picked up from orphanages in the dead of night. It is a risk. It has nothing to do with her increasing reluctance to leave her Pauchok at such an orphanage forever. Instead she leaves her at night nurseries, pays women to babysit her. She receives judging looks and knows they think her a hooker but she doesn’t care. She is guilty of worse.

No, she is not guilty, she is glorified by bigger things. To think otherwise is disloyal. She is a knife, this is her purpose.

Why does she think of little red riding hood?

She has left her Pauchok at a night nursery when she meets a contact to get papers she will need for her fourth contracted kill. The contact pulls a gun on her, tells her the KGB wants her back now. She tells him she hasn’t finished her mission, asks him what he knows about the KGB. It is easy to manipulate him into thinking he’d been tricked, easy to remind him she knows so much more about the KGB, is so much higher up than he’ll ever be. It’s easy to convince him to make dozens of sets of papers, documents for her.

She stands at a cross-roads. Natalia knows this.

No. She knows nothing. There is no choice to make. She is loyal.

She thinks of the little mermaid.

The KGB wants her back. They will punish her. Then they will ask why she was gone so long. They will push and push, they will examine her until they find the evidence of her labour on her body. They will find her Pauchok.

She thinks of snow white again. She is a knife, the best and sharpest of all the knives. Her Pauchok has good genes, she will makes a good knife for the motherland.

No.

_You’ll break them s_ he remembers saying. _Only the breakable ones_. Madam B had said. _You are marble._

_She is marble_. Natalia knows this is true.

Her Pauchok is not marble.

She thinks of Rapunzal.

The contact is still working busily on the papers. Natalia feels like she can’t breath.

They’d done something to her head.

No. They’d done nothing. Natalia was being disloyal. She had to return. She was sick, the KGB would fix her. She was loyal to the motherland.

_The ceremony is necessary_.

Maybe they would let her keep her Pauchok?

No. She was disloyal, they would punish her, they would not let her raise a child to be disloyal.

Snow white. Cinderella. Little red riding hood.

Western fairy tales, of western selfishness and greed. Foolish little girls asking for more from life, caring only about themselves. Warnings of capitalist evil.

Her Pauchok could grow up as she did, dancing in the Bolshoi. Training was hard, but they were honoured when they were chosen for the red room.

No. The memory blurred, and Natalia sees something else. She sees the lower hall of the red room, the floor slick with blood from rubbed raw skin. _Again_ an instructor says, and _again_. A dancer falls. _Again_. They do not get up. _Again_. A gun is pulled. _Again_. The report of the bullet is loud, but Natalia doesn’t flinch. _She is marble._

Natalia can’t breath.

They had done something to her head.

“Your papers are ready.”

“Thank you.”

She raises the gun, the report of the bullet is as loud as it is fast. There is no time to panic, no time to run, the man crumples to the floor with as little protest as the 4 year old in Natalia’s memory.

She is disloyal.

She has chosen her path.

She feels the strangest sense of deja-vu, but twisted, as though she is walking a path she shouldn’t have walked for years. She ignores it as she gathers the papers together, and leaves, setting the place on fire as she does so. The man would have likely already reported her to the KGB, so there was little point hiding that she’d been there, but there is a point hiding the evidence of the papers he made her. Then she retrieves her Pauchok and runs.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the second chapter. I'll be posting around 5pm (UK time) on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. :-) 
> 
> Hope you enjoy.

For a month she moved quickly, hitch-hiking, hiding in baggage cars of trains, stealing cars, anything that allows her to travel unmarked by authorities. She goes to Europe, travels under more than a dozen names, dyes her hair, puts contacts in her eyes, changes both and her make-up regularly, and dressing her Pauchok in an ever changing collection of stolen and bought clothes. Her Pauchok goes through as many names as she does, switches gender seven times, always has her face tucked into the baby-carrier Natalia always has strapped to her front. She leaves her Pauchok for only hours, scouting out a location for hours before she entrusts her daughter to the night nursery or babysitting service. She takes out her marks quickly and quietly, collects her money and takes her daughter and moves on. She knows the kills are marked, knows it’s common knowledge the Black Widow has gone rogue, knows it brings danger.

But it’s all she knows. She is a knife, the sharpest knife in the hands of the motherland. Except she is no longer in the hands of the motherland. She is disloyal. Her mind is twisted with a dozen fairy tale characters, ideas and films connected to the programming she’s realising goes deep into her mind.

She’s no longer sure what of her past is real and what is not.

She’s not sure she was ever even part of the Bolshoi. Perhaps there was only ever the red-room.

She can no-longer trust her mind, trust what she has learned.

The capitalist pigs around her do not look nearly as bad as she was always taught they were. As they always seemed on missions. But then again, the people in this game were rarely the best of humanity. Sometimes, she wonders if perhaps the red-room was the worst.

She knows she will not give her little Pauchok to the red-room.

She is disloyal. She is a traitor.

She has put down enough traitors to know they are coming for her. She makes sure they cannot connect her Pauchok to any identity she uses on missions. She moves city or country after every job, taking official and unofficial transports, buying and selling cars, getting on planes with fake IDs, hitchhiking or walking across borders. She builds new covers, finds new safe houses, collects new contacts everywhere she goes. A network to warn her of danger, to send jobs her way, to make her strong, untouchable enough to protect her Pauchok on the day she can no-longer hide her.

She slips into dozens of new identities, pretends to be a mother as normal as the ones she sees walking around the streets, pretends to be one of the desperate mothers searching for a place to stay, unmarried women cast out by parents or fleeing abusive homes. She stays in shelters with them, watches them and learns, even as she keeps an eye constantly on her Pauchok and safety.

She learns at the shelters, stays in them longer than she intends. She learns about stimulating babies’ senses, giving them bright colours. Laying them on their backs to roll around, to reach for things and develop what they call motor skills. Letting them try and struggle with things themselves. She learns that holding her Pauchok all the time isn’t good for her, and learns to put her down, even though it feels terrifying. She learns that her Pauchok is seriously behind in developing motor skills, and does her best to give her the opportunities to catch up. She buys and shoplifts baby toys, reads books about infant care and development, learns about comfort objects. She allows Daisy to make a favourite of a little fuzzy toy cat, small enough to hide whenever they travel, unimportant enough to go unnoticed as a marker.

Her Pauchok turns six months old and she starts feeding her little bits of food that isn’t milk. Mashed up fruit and boiled vegetables that the books say are good to start solid food on. Her Pauchok learns to roll, and starts to teethe with tearful wails that only quieten when Natalia provides a finger to chew on or an ice-cube to suck on. She learns that singing to her Pauchok, no matter what language it’s in, helps her daughter to calm, dries her tears and helps her to sleep. Finds that she loves singing to her daughter, loves the weight of her baby girl in her arms, whether she is bouncing or sleeping.

She moves from place to place, never staying anywhere longer than three weeks. Her Pauchok turns seven months, then eight, but Natalia is slowing, a bone deep exhaustion dragging over her steps like death. She hasn’t slept deeply since she left KGB headquarters, fourteen months ago. Without the handcuffs that signal the relative safety of base she cannot fully relax, and she can only go for so long on the half-sleep she gets without them. The half-sleep helps but it is not enough, has never been enough, and she has long run out of reserves. A week after her Pauchok turns eight months she hits the tipping point, the half-sleep no-longer even providing rest, and two nights later she gives in, more exhausted than she’d ever been in her life, even in the red-room, with reality blurring around her as her mind struggled and drowned without proper sleep. Snatched hours of half-sleep are no longer even lengthening the time she can last, and staying awake has become more of a danger than risking true sleep. She steals the handcuffs, barricades her door, straps her Pauchok safe and tight to her chest, puts a gun under her pillow and cuffs one wrist to the bed-frame. She sleeps like the dead for hours until her daughter’s cry for milk wakes her. She feeds her, cuffs herself again and sleeps until morning.

She doesn’t let herself use the cuffs until she’s been somewhere three days, until she’s done all she can to make sure somewhere is safe. She doesn’t let herself use them after she’s been somewhere more than two weeks. But between that, she sleeps deeply.

It’s a risk. It’s a weakness. It’s a danger to her Pauchok.

She knows they are hunting her.

Her Pauchok turns nine months, says her first word, and the moment freezes Natalia in place and sets itself deep into her memory. A memory she will always know to be _true_. Her little Pauchok lying on her play mat, arms held up demanding to be picked up, “Mama”.

Love is for children. But her little Pauchok is a child so surely she must be allowed to give it?

Natalia knows it is redundant anyway, she has done many things that she is not allowed. The screaming in her head reminds her of it every single day. Disloyal. Traitor. She is coming apart at the seams, and only her Pauchok holds her together. She fought through the struggle in her head every day, fought through it for her Pauchok. She took jobs, found the intel, took out her marks, and came back to her Pauchok. She gathered constants of her new life.

Two bags. The smaller one mostly hers, with two sets of clothes, constantly changing, and a collection of guns and knives that also changed. A larger one mostly Daisy’s, with her collection of frequently changing clothes, diaper kit, toys, blanket and mat, a collection of identities and money and documents hidden carefully among them.

Moving. At least twice a month, sometimes staying in shelters, sometimes guest houses, staying under dozens of identities, no identity used more than once.

Marks and targets, manipulation and assassination, then coming home to her Pauchok. Playing with her, singing to her, rocking her to sleep. Reading to her, guessing what her second word ‘want’ referred to each time, doting on her. She gave everything she had, everything she could give to her Pauchok, loved her with every fibre of her brainwashed, broken being.

Fighting and fear. Battling every step against the programming in her head, fighting every moment not to go back to the KGB. She is coming apart at the seams.

Her Pauchok turns ten months, then eleven, then a year old. Natalia makes it onto a lot of very short lists; the knife of the motherland gone rogue, the list of the Black Widows victims growing weekly. Everyone wanted to turn her or take her out. She knows it’s only a matter of time before someone finds out about her little Pauchok. Knows she is running away from everything but there is no safety to run towards. She has long left Europe, returned, and left again, travelled through most of Asia, North and South America, briefly been to Africa, returns to Europe. Her Pauchok turns 13 months, learns a short collection of words and becomes ever more difficult to keep secret. Her mind feels like it is tearing to pieces every single day. She makes the top of a lot of very short lists. She makes the top of one list too many.

She doesn’t know she’s been found until an instant before the bullet goes through her leg. Some deep ingrained sixth sense warns her a moment before the bullet hits, allowing her to lunge forwards, bursting into a run so that the bullet goes through her upper thigh rather than her chest. The chest her Pauchok is strapped to. Heedless of the pain, the blood, and the screaming of those around her, she runs. It’s just hours after an op, and she knows she must have made a mistake. And now she is fleeing through a crowded shopping centre from at least one gunman with deadly aim. Now she is fleeing not for her life but for her Pauchok’s. She steals a scarf from a shop as she sprints past, ties it tightly around her leg without fully stopping, knowing that to bleed out could sentence her Pauchok to a bullet. She is armed, but she has only two knives and a single gun. Natalia has no idea how many enemies there are. She plunges into a crowd, comes out walking calmly. Running drew attention, if there weren’t eyes on her, there was no advantage to running. She ducks into a clothes shop, changes everything she is wearing and ties the wound tightly under new jeans. She climbs out a window at the back and drops a metre to the ground, arms protecting her sleeping Pauchok from the jolt.

She knows an instant later that she’s made a deadly mistake. She turns to find an arrow, an actual Robin Hood legit arrow, pointed at her chest. She hadn’t really shaken the sharpshooter. There is nowhere to run, no time to plan, there is only the instinct that makes her spin round to face the wall, her whole body hunching around her Pauchok, protecting her with her body. It goes against deep seated instincts beaten into her to turn her back on an enemy, on danger, but her instinct to protect her Pauchok was stronger.

The arrow was too close, drawn back too tight, it would go right through her body.

“ _Don’t! Please!_ ”

The Black Widow has not genuinely begged since she was tiny.

Natalia will beg for the life of her daughter.

“Whose child is that?” the voice behind her is rough with shock, but surprisingly young. Almost as young as Natalia.

“I don’t know” she answers “I stole her to help my disguise.” Perhaps if he thinks the child isn’t hers, isn’t the daughter of an enemy agent he will spare her, will send her somewhere safe.

“I don’t believe you. No-one who would kidnap a child would care enough to protect them.”

“I grew to care for her.” Natalia says, there is a tremor in her voice, she hates it.

“I don’t believe you. Only a mother would react like that. A real mother. A good mother.”

There is a crack in the archer’s voice that tells Natalia this man hasn’t had good parents anymore than she has. Maybe, maybe she can use that.

“Please, let me put her down.” she begs “I won’t run. I swear. Just let me put her down. And, after, take her somewhere safe. Let her grow up normal. Let her live. _Please._ _Please._ ” Her voice shakes with fear, her Pauchok is just 13 months. She’s a baby. She hasn’t even begun her life. “ _Please_ ” she begs again.

There is a tiny hiss behind her, the slight creak of a bowstring being safely loosened, a slight click as the arrow is removed. Natalia doesn’t dare believe it.

“I’m not going to shoot you.” the man says.

He’s an idiot. A stupid, naïve idiot. She draws her gun and spins. The man is fast, but he’s taken the arrow out so she is faster. The gun is pointed at his heart and he freezes. She was right in her guess of his age, he is young. Early 20s. He has closely shaved blond hair and a bow in his hands, a quiver on his back. He looks only mildly surprised to find a gun levelled at his chest. He doesn’t run. Natalia tightens her finger on the trigger, but she hesitates.

She is tired of killing. She is tired of not knowing whether her marks deserved the death that came. She is tired of her mind tearing itself apart. She is disloyal. She is a knife without a handler. She deserves the death this man had levelled at her. This man that was going to spare her, purely because of her Pauchok. This man that could have killed her, and hadn’t, to not harm Daisy. He’d spared her, even though she had a list of kills that could reach from her head to the floor. She lowered the gun, just slightly. She could react in an instant if he raised the bow again.

“Go” she said, and it’s stupid, so stupid. He would carry the news of her child to whoever he worked for, and spies would carry it to the other players, major and minor. She is playing with her daughters life. But this man had been sent to kill her. He’d made a different call. She wouldn’t kill him unless she had to.

Surprise flashed across his face, then “Come with me.”

He was mad. She had him at gunpoint and was letting him go and he was staying to try and turn her?

“Go” she repeated.

“My name is Clint Barton, I work for Shield. I was a mercenary too, two years ago. I’ve killed people too. It’s not too late.”

“It’s years too late” Natalia says, and she didn’t mean to. It’s never a good idea to enter into dialogue.

“You can use your skills for good” Clint Barton said.

Natalia can feel herself shaking. The bullet hole in her leg hurt. Her head hurt worse. Snow White and Cinderella and the Little Mermaid and Rapunzal and Little Red Riding hood. She is a knife that ran from the motherland. The KGB’s deadliest agent gone rogue. She has kill lists longer than many agents that actually survived to reach retirement. She is a Russian spy gone rogue. She is disloyal. She is coming apart at the seams. Snow White and Cinderella and the Little Mermaid and Rapunzal and Little Red Riding hood.

“They did something to my head.” she says “Can you help me?”

“I don’t know” Clint said. “We can try.”

“Will she be safe?” Natalia asks, and its the most important question she’s ever asked in her life.

“Yes” said Clint and she knows he understands what he is saying.

Natalia fires, a twitch of her hand sending the bullet spitting out of the barrel and flying through the air just between his legs. Clint jumps and lets out an undignified shriek. He does not raise the bow again.

“I trust you.” Natalia says, and she thinks it’s true. She lowers the gun properly, then tucks it back into her waistband. Her Pauchok, finally woken by the crack of the gun, wails, and she bounced a little shushing her gently. Clint stands watching silently as she soothes her back to sleep.

“What now then?” Natalia asks when she’s done.

“Do you need to pick anything up?” Clint asks. He doesn’t need to ask if she is coming with him.

“I have bags at a hotel” she says. There is nothing she cannot replace, but she doubts there will be baby toys or her Pauchok’s favourite book where she’s being taken.

“I have a car” Clint offers.

Natalia nods, accepting his offer, and they don’t speak as she follows him out of the alley back onto the streets. The only things Natalia says as they drive are directions. They don’t speak as she picks up her two bags and follows Clint back to the car, don’t speak as Clint drives out of the city and leads her to a plane she recognises as a quinjet. A man in a suit is pacing up and down the ramp of the quinjet, and his jaw drops open when he sees Natalia. For an instant she feels an overwhelming sense of deja-vu rush over her like she’d been here before, done this exact thing before. But then her daughter stirs against her chest, mumbling a little in her sleep and it’s gone.

The man is called Phil Coulson, and he is Clint’s handler. Clint, Natalia learns quickly, needs handling. She is the latest in a long line of stunts that Clint has pulled on mission, and Coulson’s “ _Clint!_ ” tells Natalia everything she needs to know about the relationship the two of them share.

“It’s ok. He turned me first. He’s not a complete idiot.” she offers, and Clint sqwarks with outrage. Coulson pulls a gun out and holds it firmly, but doesn’t raise it just yet.

“And why would the Black Widow agree to join Shield?” he asked. Careful, protective.

“Why would a Shield agent spare the Black Widow?” she returns.

Coulson looks like he’d rather like to groan, but resists the urge.

“She has a daughter!” Clint said, defensively, and Coulson’s eyes instantly flew to the overlarge coat she’d zipped over the baby carrier. Natalia unzipped it just enough to reveal Daisy’s sleeping head and then zipped it up again. The gun went tumbling from Coulson’s hand and clattered on the floor.

“He said she would be safe.” Natalia says “Is that true?”

Coulson opens his mouth, closes it, visibly pulls himself together and opens it again “You have my word.”

In the spy game words mean nothing, but Natalia is good at telling if people mean it, and Coulson seems like the type that means the things he says.

“You need to look after that wound” Coulson observes, looking at her leg. Natalia looks down to find that the leg of the stolen jeans is soaked in blood, she must have bled through the scarf.

She follows Clint up the ramp of the quinjet, forces herself not to panic when Clint closes it behind her. She accepts the first-aid kit Clint offers her and matter of factly starts stripping the jeans off. Clint looks startled for an instant, then shrugs, Coulson turns rather red and mutters that he’s going to call ‘Hill’. Whoever Hill is, she shouts loud enough through the phone for Natalia to hear through the closed cockpit door. Clint winces. Natalia clings to the certainty that she read from Clint and Coulson that her daughter would be safe. She tries not to think about what they might do to her.

Daisy wakes up just as they’ve taken off, and there’s no getting her back to sleep again. She’s slept most of the afternoon, and she doesn’t want to be asleep anymore. There is a third agent on the plane, a pilot who is too terrified to come out of the cockpit, but who flies alright. It leaves Clint and Coulson sitting in the main body of the jet with her, and their eyes on her as she bounces Daisy on her knee and tries to entertain her are stressful. She plays ‘horsey horsey’ with her Pauchok until she wriggles and announces “down” in Russian. Her baby isn’t the least bit fazed by waking up to entirely different surroundings, or people; this is nothing new. Natalia unstraps herself and holds her Pauchoks hands as she takes tentative steps around the plane, giggling as she explores. She is getting better at walking every single day, and doesn’t really need her hands held anymore, but Natalia isn’t going to let her walk around a _plane_ without holding onto her. Daisy finds a cupboard in the wall of the plane and bangs against it.

“Want!”

“No Pauchok, you can’t explore that” she says in Russian, and Daisy frowns at her, and tries to open it herself. Natalia scooped her up, ignoring her complaints and carrying her back to the seat. “Mama want!” her Pauchok complains, tears threatening in her brown eyes so Natalia starts singing, continuing until her Pauchok grudgingly accepts the change of game and tries to clap along. She sings two more songs then pulls out a fit the shapes toy from the bag. She sits cross-legged on the floor with her Pauchok on her lap and holds the toy for her baby girl to post shapes through, murmuring praise when she managed it. Her Pauchok had completely caught up her fine motor skills despite not being put down much for the first five months of her life. The interaction is all familiar, nothing she hasn’t done with her Pauchok a hundred times, but she feels exposed and vulnerable with the two agents looking on. She is aware that this is not something most agents do; not something anyone would expect the Black Widow to do.

“What’s her name?” Clint asks, and Natalia looks up to read on his face that Clint understands. If he steps wrong around her daughter she will end him.

“Daisy”

“How old is she?” Coulson asked.

“Thirteen months.”

“She’s very pretty” Coulson said, smiling

“Can I play with her?” Clint asks

Instinctively, Natalia tightened her body, leaning forwards to protect Daisy.

“Ok” Clint says, and doesn’t move from his seat.

Natalia thinks about it. “You can help her with the shapes” she offers. _You can’t hold her_ goes unsaid. She doesn’t think she needs to say it.

Clint’s face lights up, but he gets slowly out of his chair, doesn’t make any sudden movements, lets Natalia track him across the room. He picks up a shape Daisy has dropped and brings it with him, offering it to the little girl who studies him, then carefully accepts the shape. Clint beams.

The flight is five hours long, and despite having a meal (Natalia kept baby food in the bags) part way through, her Pauchok is bored and cranky by the end. Natalia straps her back into the baby carrier to land, a process that takes way less time than it should have, and suggests they have landed on a larger aircraft. She tries not to feel trapped.

Neither Clint nor Coulson move when the quinjet lands, so Natalia stays where she is. When the ramp is lowered a militaristic woman marches in, hair pulled back in a tight pony tail, a face devoid of fear (but not of irritation) and an air of capability. She is alone, but Natalia isn’t fooled. There will be snipers aiming through the open ramp.

“Commander Hill” Coulson greeted. So this was the woman who was shouting.

Hill nodded to Coulson, then scanned Natalia up and down “Has she been searched?”

The look of ‘oops’ on Coulson’s face is amusing, but the man responds calmly “Not yet Commander.”

Hill doesn’t sigh, but it looks like she wants to. Natalia tightens her arms around her Pauchok. “I have a gun and two knives on me, and more weapons in the smaller bag.” she offers. And it feels stupid, _stupid_ to admit what she had to this person who could be friend or foe, but Natalia has let herself be turned, and now she needs these people to trust her.

“Take them off” Hill orders, the voice of someone used to being obeyed, even though she looks young for such responsibility. Natalia does as she’s told. She tells herself she isn’t worried about what might happen next.

“Put the child down.”

Natalia scrambles backwards without a thought, putting more space between her and Hill “Don’t you dare hurt her!”

Commander Hill took a step after her, then stopped. “Your daughter won’t be hurt. I need to search you.”

Natalia took a breath, released it, nodded. She slowly loosened the buckles holding her Pauchok into the carrier and made eye contact with Clint. An understanding passed between them without words, and the archer came forwards. She was trusting him to hold her child, no-one else. Daisy, no-doubt sensing her unease, clung to her, but Natalia kissed her cheek and hummed soothingly, and her Pauchok unhappily let herself be transferred to Clint’s arms. Natalia kept humming as she widened her stance and held her arms out to let Commander Hill pat her down. The woman did so, thoroughly but not cruelly. Natalia had been patted down many times before, and been groped in the process. Hill was professional about it, and Natalia appreciated it. She found nothing, but Natalia had known she wouldn’t. She wasn’t carrying any weapon now. Not that she needed a weapon to kill.

Finished, Hill pulled a set of handcuffs from her belt “Hands behind your back”

Natalia’s eyes flashed over to her daughter. “But...”

“You will have guns pointed at you from the moment you step out of this plane.” Hill said, not cruelly but matter-of-factly “Unless you want those guns aimed at your daughter you can’t hold her.” It was a statement of fact, not a threat, but Natalia still snarled at Hill.

“Point a gun at my daughter and I’ll end you all” she threatened

Hill didn’t give an inch “Start a fight near your daughter and I can’t control what happens in that fight.” she said.

Natalia glared poison at Hill but put her hands behind her back. The woman was right, fights were messy things, especially where guns were involved. If she started a fight her Pauchok could far too easily be hurt. The cuffs are cold around her wrists, the position and the metal around both wrists sending signals of danger through her body, so different from the safety the soothing cool gave her at night. She subtly tested the cuffs. They were good handcuffs, but she could be out of them in a second if she needed. She left them on, let them feel safe.

Hill attached longer cuffs to her ankles, and these were more difficult, but nothing she couldn’t pick in seconds, or move reasonably quickly in without removing. She doesn’t mention this either.

Hill leads her out of the quinjet, and she was right, they hadn’t landed on the ground. The vehicle they are on is like nothing Natalia has ever seen before, but she can tell with a single look that it is relatively new. This is a new base. Interesting that she is being brought here. Is this their least important base, or do they just want to keep her contained?

Hill doesn’t do the age old trick of blindfolding her and leading her in circles. It’s smart, it would only have familiarised her with the base. Instead she is led to an interrogation room and cuffed to a chair bolted to the floor. Clint follows with her Pauchok, but hesitates uncertainly at the threshold of the interrogation room. Her Pauchok whimpered, new places were normal, but people doing strange things to her Mama were not.

“It’s ok Pauchok” she said, keeping her voice low and soothing “Clint’s gonna take you to play for 10 minutes, then bring you back so I can see you smile. You got a smile for me Pauchok?”

“Back?” her Pauchok asked cautiously

“Back soon Pauchok, I promise”

Her Pauchok didn’t look entirely reassured, but she leaned into Clint a little more. Natalia couldn’t blame her, usually when she left she was gone for hours. Clint met her eyes, nodded once, and left.

Hill stared after him with a look of deep irritation “Yes agent Barton, those are your orders. Yes agent Barton, you may go.” she muttered after him, scowling. Natalia hid her amusement beneath a mask of blankness as Hill turned to her and it began.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Nat tries to adapt and Clint winds Maria Hill up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for suicidal thoughts in this chapter. It's not graphic about the thought process, but it is almost acted on, so if it's going to be a trigger, please don't read it. I've written in bold where to stop reading and where to start reading again.

It was worse than KGB debriefs. It was worse than debriefing after a mission in the red-room, knowing every mistake would be viciously punished. It was not the longest interrogation she’d been in, because she’d been trained to resist questioning in sessions that lasted days. But it was the longest interrogation she’d cooperated in. It was the most draining thing Natalia could ever remember doing, including giving birth to her daughter.

Hill asked questions, and she answered with the truth. Questions about her mercenary marks, about who hired her and where. Questions about her KGB missions, and more about the KGB itself. Questions she couldn’t answer about the red-room, questions that made her throat close up around memories real and fake that blurred together. Questions about what they’d done to her head, that she couldn’t answer in a way that made anything resembling sense. Questions about the people she’d killed. Questions and questions and questions. Each answer dragging up memories, pulling things out of her. She barely answers anything about the red-room, says she isn’t sure what is real and what is fake. But after that: she tells Hill about bullets and poison and knives. Corpses and blood covered hands. She remembers the light leaving peoples’ eyes, thinks back to kills she hadn’t give a second thought to.

She’d never fully realised how many people were dead because of her.

The interrogation goes on and on and on, exhausting in a way that nothing else has ever been, the hours broken only by Clint returning, like clockwork, every ten minutes, bearing an increasingly tired and finally sleeping Pauchok. At some point Hill is replaced by a man who introduces himself as Nicholas Fury, director of Shield. He asks many of the same questions again, phrases them differently, pushes harder. She answers question after question until the words blur together into meaninglessness and she babbles about Snow White and disloyalty. She doesn’t realise the interrogation is over until Fury unlocks her hands and allows her to take her Pauchok. She wraps her daughter in her arms and holds her tight to her chest, clutching her warm weight against her hollow chest. She is taken to another room, this one with a bed, and a cot. The things from her Pauchok’s bags have been put on a table at the side of the room, minus the documents that had been hidden among them. She finds the baby carrier on the table and ignores the cot to strap her Pauchok to her chest where she is safest. She wedges the cot under the door handle and searches the room and attached bathroom carefully. There are cameras covering every inch, but the only other way in or out is viya the ceiling vent. Natalia has climbed through enough such vents to know someone can get in through it. She grabs onto a slat of the cover and yanks hard. Pain reverberates through her arms and shoulders but she yanks again. Three hard pulls later and the slat has come off. She snaps it into small sharp pieces and wedges them in the cover, leaving nowhere fingers could be placed to move the cover. It’s not perfect, but it’s something. She lies back on the bed and slips into an uneasy half-sleep.

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Deprogramming starts the next day, and lasts the next two weeks. It turns out that Shield could in fact help her, but it’s a painful, uncomfortable process that leaves her with splitting headaches that she refuses painkillers for. She hasn’t had the best experiences with drugs. They let her Pauchok stay with her for the process, watched over by Clint because she would let no-one else near her. The first day there is a tense moment when an agent Natalia hasn’t been introduced to cooed at her Pauchok and went to pick her up. Natalia forgot that she was trying to make Shield feel safe and twisted free of her cuffs and crossed the room in an instant, snarling threats. Hill, to her credit, didn’t even flinch as her ‘secured’ prisoner transformed into something feral. Clint laughed. Natalia was finding herself growing worryingly fond of Clint.

Deprogramming drags memories back in agonising clarity, reaching back a decade. Hill told her that even with their technology there isn’t much they can do about her earliest memories. Natalia thinks about her memories of training for the Bolshoi and the blurry but sickly memory of the fallen dancer and the bullet and says that's ok.

The deprogramming is painful. She remembers learning to fire a gun, blurry memories of being seven years old and holding something too heavy for her in her too-small hands, overlaid by sharper memories of pirouettes. She remembers shooting first at round targets, then man-shaped targets. Remembers the dead bodies brought in for them to practice on, to learn the difference in damage a bullet will do depending on where it hits. Remembers with painful clarity the masked, living man brought in, remembers the gun in her hand, her aim true as she pulls the trigger. _I am marble_ she’d thought, and the bullet had found a home between his eyes. She’d been 10 years old. Madam B had given her a large dinner with meat while the other girls got only a single slice of bread. A year later she’d put a bullet in her sister, and there had been no mask. The year after that she was sent on her first mission. She still remembered the screams behind her as the man was found dead in his office.

_I am marble_ she told herself. Living it had not broken her, remembering it would not either. She pretends she believes this.

Clint is there through all of it, passing her Pauchok over to her any moment she is given the slightest break. She clings to Daisy as Daisy clings to her, pressing kisses to her daughter’s cheeks and singing endlessly to her. In the evenings, Clint shows her around the helicarrier, tells her about missions he’s done that he probably shouldn’t be talking about. He brings her drinks of strong coffee and rich hot chocolate, decadence she’s never allowed herself because it’s capitalist and stolen. But she’s beginning to know differently now, although she will later learn that the people who grow the things that made the drinks aren’t exactly paid well either. But she’s beginning to learn that Western doesn’t mean evil, beginning to understand that capitalist doesn’t mean heartless. And with every day that passes her past closes in on her like a vice. A list of names begins to cycle constantly around her head, their faces replace the images of children's films that were used to program her. Names and faces, ages and dates. Too many faces she cannot name, to many names she cannot put a face to. Red laps around her ankles, rises up to her throat and drowns her. She imagines she has a ledger, visualises miles and miles of red entered into it, blood pouring off the pages. Her Pauchok laughs and she smiles, gives her a cuddle, bounces her in her arms, sings to her. Her Pauchok is green in her ledger.

One life she’s created against hundreds she’s taken.

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Halfway into her second week of deprogramming, she breaks out of the room and runs through the halls, her feet carrying her up and up and up. She can’t shake the feeling of the knife in her hand, of too many knives and too many guns in her hands. Remembers the feeling of lifeblood pouring over the knife and onto her hands, can’t blink away the ghost memory of his son’s eyes, wide from the chair he was tied to. She doesn’t even know the boy’s name. Doesn’t know what happened to him. Her feet carry her to the highest deck of the helicarrier, out into the biting cold. Agents startle and raise guns at her, but she’s already running. She sprints the length of the deck and vaults over the safety barrier, and there she freezes, looking down at the miles of empty air, and the ocean beneath it. She’d die the moment she hit the waves, if the falling didn’t kill her first. She stands there, staring death in the face. She wonders if this is what her victims felt as they looked at her. The frailty of life, how quickly it could be snuffed out. Natalia thinks she should be afraid, and her white-knuckled grip on the railing suggests she is, but she doesn’t feel the slightest inclination to move away from the drop.

One step, and she would join her victims. It would be fair. It would almost be just. But how can one life pay for hundreds?

“Natalia?”

It’s Hill behind her, Natalia wonders when she was made aware of what was going on. When she’d run from the room she was supposed to be secured in or when she’d arrived on the deck? She doesn’t respond.

“Natalia come away from the edge.” Hill orders, but her voice is gentler than Natalia has heard it before.

“Why haven’t you killed me? I have killed so many.” she says. She doesn’t move.

“Killing yourself won’t bring them back.” Hill says, and it’s not intended to be cruel but it is. Her tears are sliding, frozen down her cheeks, and she can’t feel her hands anymore. Perhaps she will simply lose her grip and fall.

“Your skills could prevent others from dying though.” Hill says “But not if you fall. If you fall then no good will come of this, only pain and death.”

“I deserve to die.” she says, feels her voice crack.

“You were a child Natalia.” It’s Fury, behind her. She didn’t even hear him arrive over the howling of the wind. She’s seen the man only sporadically since that first day. The director must really want her in his arsenal. “You were not given a choice. You have a choice now.”

“You chose to turn, you chose to come in.” Hill reminded her.

“No,” Natalia whispered “it was me. I did it.” She remembers the feel of knives in her hands, blood on her skin. The weight of a gun, the recoil as a bullet took a life. The resistance of bones and muscle as she snapped a neck, the crack of bones as they broke.

“Then make it right. Get back here before I make you.” Fury ordered.

“You can’t make me do anything. No-one can.” Natalia said.

“You’ll obey orders agent or I will give you no choice but to.” Fury snapped and the words would have made her laugh if he hadn’t called her agent.

They really intended to make her an agent of shield. To send her out to be the shield where she had once been a knife.

She had been the sharpest knife in the hands of the motherland. But knives could protect as well as attack. She could be the edge of the Shield that protected the world.

“I-I”

“Now Agent Romanova, that’s an order.”

“I-I can’t feel my hands” she choked and then there was a step behind her and a vice grip on her upper arms as Hill dragged her bodily backwards over the safety railing and away from the edge. She crumples to the deck, her legs refusing to hold her, but Hill drags her up, pulls her further from the edge and she forces her legs to function, to stumble along with her, barely hearing the lecture Hill was giving her until the woman physically shook her.

“Huh?” she asks.

Hill looks at her disapprovingly for a moment, then her expression gentles “Please don’t do that again Natalia.”

“Natasha”

Hill raises an eyebrow

“I want to be Natasha. Natasha Romanoff.”

“Natasha then, but I’m only doing the paperwork once, so are you sure?”

“I’m sure” she says.

Natalia Romanova was the name given to her by the red-room. It is who she was, and part of it is who she is. But she is different. She is Russian, but she isn’t KGB. She will be a little western too. Natasha Romanoff.

The deck is curiously absent of the agents that had been dotted around earlier, but Clint is waiting just inside the door. Her Pauchok is in his arms. _Get back here before I make you_. Fury had said. She’d said he couldn’t. She was wrong. She didn’t know what his plan was, to let Daisy go to her mama to force her to come back or just to make her return or die infront of her infant child. She didn’t care which it was.

Fury was a trained, experienced agent. It didn’t matter. Hill had good instincts, and she was fast. It didn’t matter. She was better. She was faster. Her nails raked across Fury’s cheek, each one drawing blood. Hill went for her gun behind Natasha but she ignored it.

“Don’t you ever, _ever_ again think of using my daughter like that.”

Fury met her eyes without flinching, glared right back, not even wiping away the blood dripping down his face.

“There are enough children without parents in the world. I’ll do what I have to.” _Here and for the world_.

Natasha glared at him “Not with her”

“I will never put her in danger.” A promise if not an apology.

Natasha doesn’t say another word as she returns to deprogramming, just takes her daughter and holds her close. Hill comes by in the evening to tell her that her mandatory therapy begins next Monday. Natasha nods her understanding and doesn’t tell Hill she has no intention of going. Her head is messed up enough as it is, she doesn’t need someone else trying to mess around with it.

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The day she is declared fully deprogrammed Clint takes her to the canteen for supper. It is a massive room, full of noisy agents, and she doesn’t think she likes it. She takes a tray, gets some food, and walks out again with her Pauchok strapped to her front. Clint follows her, complaining about eating in the corridor when there were perfectly good tables inside.

“You didn’t have to follow me.”

“I’m not sitting in there alone!”

“If you don’t like it why take me?”

Clint shrugs “I thought you should see what most people do.”

Natasha gives him a look that carries all the feelings she needs to communicate about how stupid this is, and Clint shrugs. “Lets go eat in the vents then. It’s more fun.”

Natasha thinks it’s the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard of in her life, but it does turn out to be a lot of fun. Her Pauchok things it’s hysterically funny, and her laughs echo around the enclosed space and bring a bright smile to Natasha’s face. Clint and her lie on their tummies facing each other, Daisy sitting in the middle, and they both feed her bits of food from their plates. Natasha coaxes her to try everything, because she read in a baby book it was important to experience lots of different tastes as a child. When they are done they leave their trays in a vent and crawl on, Daisy giggling brightly. Clint takes them up several decks in the vents (the tricky bits carefully navigated with Daisy passed from person to person), to above Hills office, and they lie peering down at her. Daisy seems to understand their stealthy silence because she muffles her giggles, and in a good ten minutes Hill doesn’t notice anything. Clint produces a surprisingly realistic toy tarantula from his pocket and carefully attaches some cord to it. He lowers it through the vent slowly, waving the string a little to make it wiggle in the air. Hill glanced up when it was nearing her face height and flung herself backwards in her chair, then glared at the ceiling. Clint dropped the spider and started rapidly crawling backwards and Natasha followed, Hill’s exasperated cry of “ _Barton!!_ ” chasing their retreat through the vents and Natasha finds herself giggling as hard as Daisy was. She’s never in her life done something like that.

Clint takes them down several floors without bothering to leave the vents, just heading down and down until he opens a vent in the ceiling above a gym containing typical agent training obstacle courses and sparring mats, but this one also has a large trampoline with surrounding netting at one end of the gym. Clint scrambles joyfully onto it, and Natasha lifts her Pauchok up to him and climbs up after her, zipping closed the netting behind her.

Daisy has never been on a trampoline before, and decides in moments that they are her favourite thing in the world. She leaps up and down, her shrieks of laughter managing to fill the silence in the empty gym. Natasha holds her under the armpits and drops to her heels, bouncing her Pauchok against the trampoline before flinging herself up with all the force she can muster, throwing her Pauchok into the air a little as she reached the peak, just high enough for her to ‘fly’ without leaving the reach of her arms. Daisy screams with delight and holds out her arms in plea. “Want!”

Half an hour later Daisy has learned a new word (“Again”) in both Russian and English and is drooping against Natasha in exhaustion. She sat her in her lap and bounced gently, until her Pauchok is limp with sleep. They take the stairs back up to Natasha’s room, and Clint teaches her to play a couple of American card games as Daisy sleeps in her crib. Natasha at first loses then wins spectacularly, because Clint can’t hide what he feels about his cards, not from her. It’s nearing midnight when he leaves, and Natasha is certain she can’t remember having a better evening in her entire life.

Clint doesn’t lock the door when he leaves. Natasha chooses not to chase after him to ask if he’d forgotten or if he just didn’t care he was supposed to. She picks up her Pauchok and barricades the door as usual, but there is a smile still stretching her mouth as she falls into her usual half-sleep and for the first night in a long time she feels as though she isn’t pretending to be hopeful.

\-------------

Clint is fast. He is fast and he is good. Natasha would say he was as good a fighter as she was, but she wasn’t going to admit it. They were almost evenly matched. Natasha was a hair faster, but Clint had more weight and height. Natasha’s instincts were drilled deeper into her, and she had a ruthlessness in battle, but Clint had a sixth and seventh sense for where she was going to strike next and an incredible ability to slide around her attacks. He is the most challenging opponent Natasha has trained with since the red-room and she finds herself upping her game, then upping it again to try to take him down. She tries things she’s never dared try before, trusting him to keep up, and knows he is doing the same. They fight all the way across the mats and back again, roll on the floor wrestling and lunge apart to circle each other before snapping in with kicks and blows. She finds herself challenged and panting and loving it. She pins Clint first, but Clint pins her twice in a row after that, but she gets her revenge when she forces him to tap out after throwing him to the floor, her thighs tight around his throat. She rather likes the move. She thinks she might practice it.

Daisy is not enjoying the sparring so much. Natasha made her a makeshift playpen and filled it with toys, but Daisy wanted to explore and was furious about the turn of events. She sits on the floor and wails for a few minutes, then, finding herself still in the playpen, starts disconsolately playing with her toys. Natasha reminds herself that the books say it’s not good to always give in to a child and that she needed to train. She still scooped her Pauchok up and let her explore the gym when she finished sparring. Daisy walks all over the gym, especially enjoying running around under the obstacle course, gaining ever more confidence in her legs.

Hill calls them into her office after lunch, hands Natasha a shield badge with ‘Probation’ written on it, and informs her that she is to be paired with Clint. They don’t trust her, she is told, not completely, but she is trusted to start learning protocols and working with Clint, and they will see about actual missions later. Then Hill hands her a pile of manuals to read, and Clint a stack of paperwork, and points them towards the sofa at the side of the office.

“Why do we have to do it here?” Clint whines.

“Because I know you won’t do it if I let you leave.”

Clint pouts, and Natasha lets her lips twitch at him, making him pout more.

“Want” Daisy says, pointing at the stack of paperwork.

Clint looks delighted, and obligingly lowered the stack towards the toddlers waiting arms, but freezes at the withering look the senior officer sent him. “Sorry Daisychain.” he says.

Her Pauchok’s lips began to wobble. “Want” she insists.

Hill pulls a drawer open and finds some blank paper, and holds them and some coloured pencils out to Natasha. Natasha thanks her, bites her lip, then “You can give it to her.”

Hill nods at her, communicating her understanding of the trust she is being offered, and that she understands what will happen to her if she hurts Daisy. She gives her Pauchok a gentle smile, so unlike her usual commander Hill looks that she seems almost a different person, and offers Daisy the paper and pencils. Her Pauchok makes a delighted grab and plops down on the floor to scribble.

“Say thank you Pauchok.”

Her Pauchok signs thank you in sign language and Clint looks stupidly proud. Natasha has a creeping suspicion her baby was going to grow up speaking half a dozen languages and not being able to tell the difference between any of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment, reading them makes me very happy :-)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat, Clint and Daisy on the road to strike team delta + kid

Life falls into a pattern, filled with training, memorisation and playing. Much to Daisy’s disgust the playpen makes a frequent appearance, but she is also played with and doted on by Natasha and Clint, and sometimes Coulson and Hill. Her Pauchok turns fourteen months, then fifteen and Clint starts calling her Nat rather than Natasha, and Agent Coulson is sometimes just Coulson and Hill becomes Maria when she’s not on duty. Fury also appears sometimes, and brings with him new toys that even Natasha can’t work out who he’s getting to buy. Nat gets used to Clint’s sparring style and they start taking on other agents in training, launching themselves against groups of 8 to 12 other agents and somehow coming out on top, learning each other’s movements and how to have each others back. It’s a strange feeling, fighting with one eye on someone else’s back rather than her own, but she finds she rather likes it, as long as the person watching her back is Clint. She finds she’s been assigned to Coulson to ‘handle’ and suspects she’ll need it as much as Clint does. She loses five shooting matches against Clint and tricks him into arranging a poker game with some other agents in revenge. She wins five hundred dollars despite low stakes before the other spies give up; Clint loses fifty and she makes sure to tease him about it endlessly. Trampoleening becomes a Friday afternoon tradition, invariably followed by cards or a movie when Daisy falls asleep. She is moved into a bigger, more comfortable room opposite Clint’s and they stop locking her door at night. Daisy learns seven new words in four different languages and gains enough confidence in walking to start running on her own. She falls down a dozen times a day and cries for her mama only to wriggle down after a couple of minutes and run off again undaunted.

Nat decides she and Clint are well matched, her speciality getting up close and personal, teasing information out of her marks and gathering intel and Clint’s keeping at a distance and shooting with greater accuracy than anyone else Nat has ever come across. They both itch for a mission and they get into trouble for spray painting the word ‘Boredom’ in 37 different places on the helicarrier in as many languages....although to be accurate, they get in trouble for doing it 24 times because they haven’t found all of them yet. Coulson tries to keep them out of trouble but they are both bored and itching for something more interesting. Fury gives Daisy an entire box of second hand children’s books in no less than five different languages and Nat starts reading her stories before bed on the nights she doesn’t want to settle straight away. Clint feeds her a chocolate bar in the evening one day and Daisy doesn’t settle until past 2am and Nat sweet talks and smiles around one of the Shield technicians until they practically forget their own name and give her a tiny pin that blares an alarm every twenty minutes. She embeds it in the wall of Clint’s bunk and a bleary eyed Clint swears he’ll never feed Daisy anything without permission ever again. Coulson makes her return the speaker-pin and tells Clint it serves him right. Maria briefly becomes her Pauchok’s favourite person when she returns from a mission with finger paints. Daisy is delighted with the paints until Clint manages to find a chalk-board from goodness only knew where and a box of coloured chalk that could be left out (unlike the tightly controlled paints). Clint tried to argue Daisy liked him better than her but when he holds his arms out to take her from Nat she shakes her head firmly and Nat is still clearly her favourite person.

Her Pauchok turns 16 months old and Nat is finally trusted with a mission. For a suitable definition of trust that translated to Shield needed intel _now_ and they needed it enough to risk sending in the Black Widow. She works her way into the terrorist cell in less than two days, tracks their leader to a parking garage under a shopping mall and coaxes him into the open where Clint puts a neat bullet through his eyes. They both frantically ask Coulson for instructions when she searches his car to find a dirty bomb with less than 10 minutes left on its timer. They defuse it with seconds to spare and they both decide to take an explosives course when they get back. She has been gone three days by the time they reach the helicarrier and Maria looks frazzled as she passes Daisy back and Daisy herself is furious. It had been months since Natasha left without her and she’d grown to hate it even more. Nat showered Daisy with affection and attention over the next few days and Daisy grudgingly forgave them both. It made Natasha sad but she knew her Pauchok would have to grow used to it. She mentally added the mission into her ledger in green and found she felt good about it. She notices that the security camera in her room no longer blinks a red light to indicate it is on.

Daisy turns 17 months and Director Fury becomes just Fury when he visits in the evenings. Natasha lets the man hold her Pauchok and he proves to know a surprising number of nursery rhymes. He offers to babysit when they take physical training sometimes and introduces Daisy to Goose. In response, Daisy introduces the fluffy tabby cat toy that she brought everywhere to the cat, who patiently put up with the curious toddler. Clint and Nat took the explosives course, learned a lot, and Nat got dragged into petitioning Coulson for exploding arrows. Coulson said they’d see and Clint whooped like a five year old. They get sent on two more missions and come back a bit battered but victorious and Nat holds the lives she’s saved close to her heart.

Daisy turns 18 months old and Clint disappears somewhere for two weeks and says he’ll show her when she’s allowed off unsupervised. Nat misses him like mad and tell herself it’s weakness but still mopes around Coulson’s office until he kicks her out to go train some green level one agents. Nat scares the living daylights out of the rookies trying to teach them to fight properly and Coulson decides she’s not a suitable teacher and signs her on for an advanced swimming course. The course doesn’t challenge her and she ditches it and starts teaching her Pauchok how to swim. Clint returns and laughs himself sick about the rookies and at Nat’s insistence starts teaching her sign language properly. Maria threatens to drown Nat in paperwork if she doesn’t start going to therapy and she goes through no less than five therapists in a week (Maria arranges a new therapist daily refusing to let Nat wriggle out of it) until she can’t quite scare one off and she thinks she might get on with him. She tells him nothing about her life or feelings about the KGB or the red-room but she talks to him about looking after Daisy and the stresses of being a mother and she thinks she might come to trust him a little.

Daisy turns 18 months old and goes through a crotchety faze where she refuses to sleep, she finally gets through it but Nat has hit that point again and half-sleep is no longer restful. She pushes on for three days but she is noticeably slowing and by the third day despite her best efforts even Hill asked if she was alright. There is no camera in her room any longer and she can use the handcuffs without anyone being the wiser but the thought of chaining herself up as the red-room had, of admitting they still owned her in such a way, sat wrong in her gut and pride held her off giving in. She can’t even steal half-rest the night before the fourth day, her body knowing if she does she will fall into true sleep and not wake up for anything and refusing to do so without the message of safety around her wrist. She spends the entire night trying to sleep but gets up in the morning so tired her bones feel like rock, dragging her down. Clint takes one look at her and refuses to train, and Coulson tries to send her to a doctor but she refuses to go. The world is edged with black and blurry everywhere else and Hill has to speak to her three times before she hears. Hill is taking Daisy from her and sending her back to bed, and Natasha allows it only because she’s so tired she’s a danger to her Pauchok. She falls over her own feet twice on the way back to her bunk and even though no-one has seen Nat knows when she has to give in. She detours to an equipment room and takes a pair of handcuffs without marking it gone and locks herself in her bunk. She snaps the handcuffs closed around one bed-post and knows as she does so what she’s admitting about Shield.

Because the helicarrier is her base now, and her base is safety and she’s admitting she trusts Shield enough for the handcuffs (and to not barricade the door first), not just trusting a few people. The other cuff closes cold and harsh and blissfully safe around her wrist and she sleeps the clock round and then another four hours. When she wakes it is five in the morning and Daisy’s cot is still empty. She hides the handcuffs under the mattress and takes to the vents to check first Maria’s bunk to make sure her Pauchok is there. Daisy is sleeping peacefully in a travel cot in the commander’s bunk and she breathes easier at the sight. She had left true sleep too late, left it beyond the point when she could have woken up if she needed to and it scared her, her Pauchok could have been hurt. She beats the fear into a punching bag for a couple of hours and goes to reclaim her Pauchok as other agents start creeping into the gym. Maria asks what happened but she dodges the question and goes to train with Clint and the senior officer drops it.

She makes it two weeks before Clint grabs her around the wrist during sparring and after he frowns and asked what happened. She tugs her sleeve over the red marks from the unforgiving metal and tells him it’s nothing.

“You look like you’ve been chained up. What happened Nat, is someone giving you trouble?”

Nat gave him a withering glare “If anyone had tried to give me trouble you’d have heard them screaming.”

“Where’d you get that from then?”

“I slept with some hairbands around my wrist birdbrain, they were a bit small.”

“Liar, I’ve seen hairband marks.”

“Where, you don’t even have a girlfriend?” Nat deflected. It didn’t work.

“Nat, what happened?”

“Nothing. Drop it.”

“I’m not dropping it! Those are handcuff marks! Fury’s not interrogating you again is he? You’ve proved you’re trustworthy, they have no right to...”

“ _I said drop it!”_ she didn’t mean to snap at Clint, but something twisted humiliatingly in her gut at the thought of Clint working out why she needed the handcuffs. Like a baby, like Daisy with her Teddy that was really a cat, only twisted and dark and sick. She storms out of the gym and goes to pick up Daisy from Coulson, who has taken to babysitting her every few mornings. Coulson has a few pages of paperwork for her to fill out relating to their last mission (it was actually Clint’s job but Nat wasn’t going to go get him just then). Clint has dropped it when she gets back and they grab some lunch together and don’t talk about it. Nat takes Daisy with her to her hacking training course (which Coulson says she has to take to qualify as an agent but Nat finds more than a little boring). She hacks the instructors computer and gets reported to Hill who gives her a thoroughly unimpressed lecture and two hours of paperwork and signs her off as having completed the course. Nat decides it’s worth it. Daisy smiles her way into Maria taking a break from her own paperwork and teaching her a clapping game. Nat barely keeps an eye on the two as she completes her paperwork on the sofa (well, it had been Maria’s paperwork before she hacked an instructor’s computer) and is startled anew by the realisation of how much she trusts Maria, despite the fact that she’d trusted the woman to babysit Daisy while she was on mission. Trust is weakness, Natasha knows this, but trust makes Daisy smile brightly at a Shield officer and allows her to stay with someone she knows when Natasha is on mission so perhaps it is something Natalia knew; perhaps trust is not always a weakness.

But then she goes to bed and the handcuffs aren’t under the mattress anymore and there is only one thing likely to have happened to them. She sets up a baby monitor by Daisy’s cot and clips the receiver to her belt and goes next door. Clint is sitting on his bed, clearly waiting for her and Nat doesn’t bother with leading up to it and just punches Clint in the face. He hadn’t been expecting it and the blow connected hard, knocking him off the bed. Clint yells in outrage, but jumps up to catch the look on her face and raises his hands in surrender, even though he could have fought back.

“I’m sorry.”

Nat isn’t too sure she isn’t going to punch him again. “You went through my room.” she said tightly.

“You were lying, I was worried.”

“You had _no_ right.”

“Who’s chaining you to the bed? Why are you letting them? Is it Fury?”

“It’s none of your business” Nat snarled at him. She hadn’t realised just how infuriating Clint could be when his refusal to do the smart thing and back down worked against her.

“You’re my partner, of course it’s my business! Who else will have your back?”

Nat stopped, thrown for an instant “We’re not on mission.” she pointed out.

“I’m still your partner” Clint said, as if pointing out that grass was green.

“I don’t need your help” Nat said, trying to hide how lost she felt that he was trying to give it.

“You have it anyway.” Clint said, and Nat felt tears burning behind her eyes and she tried to fight them back. She hadn’t cried since deprogramming, since the top deck of the helicarrier. She can’t remember when she last cried before that.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re lying”

“I’m the Black Widow, I don’t need help.”

“You’re Natasha, and that’s Bullshit.”

Nat wasn’t sure she could contain her tears for much longer. Not when Clint insisted on being so, so _Clint_. She turned to leave, grabbing the door handle but Clint’s voice behind her stopped her.

“Just because you can manage doesn’t mean you have to. You’re not alone anymore.”

Nat sucked in a breath, felt a tear slip down her face and willed herself to open the door before her fellow agent saw it.

“I can’t sleep without them.” she admitted instead.

“What?” Clint asked, voice confused, and she turned around.

“The handcuffs, I can’t sleep properly without them.” Clint is looking at her in horrified anger but Nat knows it’s not directed at her and she can’t stop the words tumbling past her lips “They used to cuff us to the beds at night in the red-room, and they were provided at the KGB too. Handcuffs were for base, not for mission. Handcuffs mean it’s safe to sleep. And now I c-cant sleep without them and I hate it, I _hate it_.” Her voice breaks on the last sentence, and she hates herself for it, hates the tears slipping down her face, hates that now she’s started she can’t make them stop.

Clint, dear, stupid, wonderful Clint, looks so caught between furiously angry at the red-room and awkwardly horrified that she’s crying. He walks over and wraps uncertain arms around her and it takes a moment for Nat to work out what Clint is trying to do and she finds herself giggling through her tears. “Are you trying to hug me or move an active bomb?”

“Uh, both?” Clint said, then moans theatrically in pain when she pokes him in the stomach, still laughing through her tears. She finds herself moving into rather than away from the hug, leaning her head into Clint’s shoulder as her partner tightened the embrace, gaining confidence from the fact that she wasn’t fighting. They awkwardly sank to the floor, leaning against the door as Nat cried into Clint’s shoulder for a few minutes.

“Do you want to talk about it” Clint asks when she’s done.

“No” she says automatically, then “It feels like they still own me.”

“They don’t own you Nat. They never had the right to and they never will again.”

“How do you know? They could find me again. They could brainwash me again.”

“I won’t let them.” Clint promised, and Nat could tell he meant it.

“Thank you” Nat said, and she meant it too. They sat in silence for a while, neither quite ready to move away from the hug.

“Clint?” Nat said finally.

“Hmm?”

“If it comes down to protecting me or protecting Daisy, especially from the red-room, promise me you’ll protect Daisy.”

Clint hesitated.

“Promise me Clint.” she insisted

“Only if you promise me that if only one of us can come out of a fight that it’ll be you.”

Nat hesitated, made sure her silence was long enough to make her agreement seem grudging. “Fine. I promise” she lied.

“Then I promise too. But it’s never going to come down to that. We won’t let it.”

Natasha doesn’t point out that they are both spies and assassins, and it is more likely that it will one day come down to that than it isn’t. “I need to get some sleep.” she says, regretfully climbing to her feet.

Clint gets up after her, and she looks at him until he starts and goes “Oh” and pulls the handcuffs out of a drawer. Nat doesn’t say anything as she takes them, refuses to accept the sympathy in his eyes.

She finds a silk scarf tied to her bedpost the next day, the other end already knotted into a slip knot she could tighten around her wrist. Neither of them say anything about it aloud.

Daisy turns 19 months old and Clint and Nat get offered a mission going undercover in a kitchen, Coulson told them Hill said the better cook could take it and they both pointed at the other. Their faces must have said volumes because Coulson tells them they can’t be that bad and sets them to make a stir-fry. Natasha manages to burn hers so badly they can’t get it off the non-stick pan and later finds she put so much salt and soy in that it would have been inedible anyway. Clint makes his explode. Coulson wonders aloud how they’ve made it this far in life and Nat says ‘sandwiches’ and Clint ‘ready meals and takeaway’ and they both point out there is a reason they always get food from the canteen. Coulson tells Hill she’ll need to find someone else for this mission and signs them both on for a compulsory cooking course. Their first lesson they are supposed to make pancakes and Nat’s come out charred on the outside and half-raw in the inside and Clint’s do something even the instructor can’t explain until she works out Clint managed to put baking powder in rather than flour. They both hide in the vents with Daisy their next two lessons until Fury calls them up to personally tell them that he will not have two of his best agents unable to cook a thing and ends the call with ‘or else’. They enter their next lesson with shoulders squared like they are going into battle and the instructor’s face falls at the sight of them. Clint boils his soup so dry the instructor doesn’t even notice he melted a spatula into it but Nat can’t tease him about it because she somehow managed to set hers on fire and even she can’t work out how it happened. The instructor decides they need private lessons where she can ‘watch them properly’. Maria listens to the entire story with a blank face and then buries her head in her hands and asks them to ‘please try not to destroy the helicarrier’.

Daisy turns 20 months old and at they go on three short missions and at the end of one, when they are all cleaned up, they meet in Coulson’s office with Maria as has become traditional and chat about anything but their jobs. Coulson asks how old Daisy is now and on hearing her age comments “Doesn’t she have some vaccinations coming? Do we need to get anything specially in?”

“Vaccinations?” Nat asked, and both Coulson and Maria looked at her like she’d gone mad.

“Yes, you know, MMR vaccine, polio vaccine, things to stop her getting ill. Has she never had them?”

Nat tried to hide her alarm, but her arms tightened around Daisy and she could feel fear building up in her body. Maria caught the rebalancing of her weight as her body automatically prepared to jump up and flee, and Daisy’s clouding face as she sensed her mama’s anxiety.

“Has she even been to a doctor?” Maria asked and Nat was on her feet, the toy Daisy had been playing with tumbling to the floor as her arms closed tight around her daughter. Coulson misread her alarm and reached for his phone.

“It’s ok, I can get ask which doctors are trained in child medical care and they can have a look at her right now.”

Nat’s chest felt tight and she could feel adrenaline surging close on the heels of the panic beating through her body “ _No doctors! No! Don’t you dare!_ ” she spat and Coulson and Hill’s faces went tight with alarm and Clint raised his hands soothingly and said “No one’s going to hurt either of you Nat” but it’s already much too late. Her eyes and her mind are already disconnecting and her feet are already carrying her frantically out the door and she’s bolting into the vents and she’s fleeing, fleeing, fleeing with her Pauchok clinging to her. Coulson and Maria shout behind her and they are trusted people but they’re going to take her Pauchok to the doctors and her Pauchok is _perfect_ as she is and she won’t let them, she won’t, she _won’t_ let them hurt her. Clint is climbing into the vents behind her but all she can think of are the red-room guards that pinned her down and strapped her to the table and the white coated doctors filling syringes with liquids that burned and burned and burned. She flings two marbles behind her, hears them hit the side of the vents hard enough to ricochet off another side and the guard behind her stops chasing but she’s still fleeing and fleeing and fleeing.

She doesn’t know where she ends up, somewhere in the vents she doesn’t recognise, but it’s hard to recognise anywhere at the moment, and she knows, with some distant still functioning part of her mind, that these are called flashbacks, the things - the memories, she is seeing. Her Pauchok is quiet and frightened, clinging tight to her front, and it’s the only thing reminding her where she really is. Her mind plays one image after another in her head and Nat wants to scream her voice hoarse but she was silent then and she is silent now. _I am marble_ but everything hurts. _I am marble_ and she is silent but the serum is burning her up from the inside out. _I am marble_ but the doctors are coming again and they say they’re making her better and they say she’ll never get sick again but it hurts so much and she wants to scream. _I am marble_ and she bites back her cry as another syringe empties into her body. Her Pauchok whimpers “Mama” and briefly, she remembers where she is. She soothes her, singing a nursery rhyme so quietly she can barely hear her own voice and it provides a distant contrast to the harsh straps she can still feel pinning her thrashing form to the metal table as her blood seemed to boil in her veins and her breath stabbed in her lungs. The world blurs into a tangled mix of realities and she isn’t sure what’s real and what's not. She sings on and on but it feels like a dream, a child floppy with uneasy sleep in her arms but distant and strange like a pain wrought hallucination as the doctors unstrap her from the table and move her to a hard bed lined up with the others. 28 little bodies moaning through the night and she knows they will not all see the dawn but she is marble and she is silent and she will survive. _I am marble_. _I am marble. I am marble_.

Natasha isn’t sure when the flashback ends, when she remembers when she is and who she is now. The vent is icy cold underneath her back, reminding her of the table she was strapped to all those years ago. Her muscles are tense and aching with holding herself stiff and still for hours, refusing to cry and thrash in response to the pain her mind had dragged up. Her Pauchok is sleeping uneasily on her chest and Nat feels guilt stab at her for dragging her baby girl with her. Then she remembers Clint and Coulson and Hill and they wanted to take her Daisy to the doctors and panic surges all over again. But Clint had promised Daisy would be safe and Coulson had given his word and Nat knew Maria adored Daisy even if Commander Hill would never admit it and surely they didn’t really mean to let doctors vaccinate her Pauchok. She knew Clint would protect Daisy with his life and Coulson didn’t have it in him to hurt a child and Maria wasn’t nearly as hard as she’d have her agents believe and maybe, maybe they meant something else when they’d said vaccinations.

Coulson’s office is empty when she crawls out of the vents and makes her way back from where she’d ended up. Clint’s bunk is empty too so she makes her way to Maria’s office, unsurprised to find the Commander still working there despite the fact that it was 1am now. Maria looked up as she walked in, pale and drawn and cradling Daisy like she was desperately fragile, and set her work aside.

“I won’t ask what they did to you.” Maria said by way of greeting “But there is coffee in the cupboard and cake in the break room and I’ve made a list of websites on child vaccination you should read and when you’re ready we can talk about what we should do.”

“Yes Commander Hill.” she says because it’s easier. Easier than addressing Maria as her friend and facing how badly she’d freaked out over the mere idea of a doctor being near her little Pauchok. She takes the coffee from the cupboard and boils the kettle and lays Daisy gently down on the sofa to make the coffee. She watches Maria out of the corner of her eye but the other agent understands without a word being spoken that Nat doesn’t trust anyone with her Pauchok right now and she doesn’t move from her chair. Nat drinks half the coffee in one go and can’t bring herself to care when she burns her mouth; she takes the laptop Maria offers her and sits along the sofa so her legs stop Daisy from rolling off and she opens the laptop and starts reading.

Maria must have contacted Clint because a few pages in her partner drops silently from the vents. He examines Nat’s half-empty mug of coffee, finds it the black she likes best and adds milk before he finishes it and comes to sit on the floor next to her, leaning his head against her side in silent reassurance. A page after that Nat moves her arm to dangle in a half-hug over Clint’s shoulder and Clint grabs her hand and squeezes tightly. _I’m here_. She squeezes back, Clint’s hand warming her icy fingers. _Thank you._

An hour later Clint has slouched down and his head is resting on her leg as he sleeps and Nat keeps reading. Maria ignores them both as she continues working, occasionally issuing orders or asking for information down her comm as she continues to plan whatever op has her up so late. None of them leave the office and by the time the sun has risen Nat has read all the pages on vaccination Maria found, hacked into shield medical and read through pages and pages of agents medical records confirming that these doctors were different. These doctors didn’t try to make you better, they tried to make you well.

Both Clint and Coulson came with her to medical, her partner looking uncomfortable by just being in the medical wing of the helicarrier but his steps unhesitating next to her. Nat chooses the most weedy looking doctor she finds and pretends she picked him because he’s got one of the best records and has experience working with children before shield. The man proves to have surprisingly strong nerves because he only gulps the once at finding the Black Widow and Hawkeye knocking on his office door (she hadn’t bothered informing anyone they were coming) and he chatters cheerfully with Daisy while he gives her a check-up. Nat holds Daisy in her lap for as much of the check-up as she can and Coulson sits next to her, offering calming comments and a soothing presence while Clint made stupid jokes and distracted Nat in a way that only Clint really could. The doctor examines Daisy carefully and asks Nat a collection of questions before pronouncing the toddler very healthy but needing a list of vaccinations. He gives Daisy several of them then, the toddler perfectly fine with the needle but Nat tense with worry and radiating threat throughout the entire process. The doctor puts a plaster on Daisy’s arm and gives her a sticker for her jumper then thinks a moment and gives Nat one too.

Coulson proposes celebratory pancakes and they raid the kitchen (the kitchen staff got used to one or both of them dropping out of the ceiling months ago) for supplies and bring them back to the senior agents break-room which has a little stove. Nat and Clint keep their distance (Nat can now cook an omelette and Clint can make grilled cheese sandwiches but those are their only successes in cookery so far) from the cooking but take charge of covering the cooked pancakes in syrup or cream and fruit and none of them ask Nat a single question about the night before. And if that evening Nat told Clint what she’d seen in the flashback well, that was her business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments make me very happy :-)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Natasha is still very much working this parenthood thing out.

Daisy keeps the sticker she got from the doctor for a week, insisting on it being moved from clothing to clothing until it didn’t have the slightest bit of stick left to it at which point she cried for ten minutes before Clint managed to find two stickers (they came off bananas’ from the canteen) to replace the old one. Nat and Clint went on another mission together and she came back from it with two packs of animal stickers that Daisy is utterly enraptured by even though Nat will only let her take one before she puts them away for later. Her Pauchok turns 21 months old and her vocabulary starts growing at a truly impressive rate but all jumbled together, Russian confused with English and mixed in with Spanish and Mandarin, with sign language scattered throughout it. When a request for a particular food for dinner involved four different languages Nat put her foot down and proclaimed that from then on they would only speak one language to Daisy each day and they would stick to that language. Coulson, speaking English and fluent Spanish but not Russian, Mandarin or much sign language suggested that if everyone else just stuck to English all the time and Nat and Clint had a language a day Daisy might grow up speaking five languages rather than one language that only she and Strike Team Delta could understand.

Her Pauchok turns 22 months old and she and Clint go on three quick missions together back to back but don’t get a single hours sleep between them and Clint takes two energy pills before the last mission and is still shaking when they get back to extraction with the result that neither of them get any sleep on the quinjet back and they both have to listen to a lecture on safe uses of energy stimulants. Nat gives Daisy the bear she picked up for her before the second mission then falls asleep on Coulson’s sofa and wakes up with her left wrist stretching above her but almost a feeling of victory when she realises it’s the first time she’s fallen into a proper sleep without something securing her wrist above her. Her Pauchok discovers the word ‘no’ and learns it in all 5 different languages in the space of a day and delights in using it to Nat’s great frustration, especially as she was beginning to take equal delight in ignoring it. To make it worse she has been shooting up and has gained enough height and mobility to climb out of the playpen and after three long days in which Nat grew increasingly aware of the level that Daisy understood that what she was doing was ‘naughty’ and increasingly unable to distract her from what she wanted to do she’s had it. Finally, when Daisy was finally asleep after an evening meal which involved two cups accidentally tipped over because Daisy ignored being told ‘no’ and a bowl purposefully tipped over, Nat buried her head into Clint’s pillow (she wasn’t risking waking Daisy by doing it in her room) and screamed aloud. Clint awkwardly patted her back until she was done screaming and rolled onto her back to moan at Clint.

“She just won’t listen anymore! I’ve told her ‘no’ and I’ve told her ‘that’s naughty’ but she’s not _listening_ and the baby books don’t _say_ what to do when she stops listening! She won’t even let herself be distracted anymore!”

“Err” said Clint, looking sympathetic but utterly lost “do they not say anything at all?”

“I’ve only got two, and they only talk about 0-18 months.” Nat admitted “But Shield doesn’t exactly have a library of parenting books.”

“We could get some more next time we get sent somewhere suitable?” Clint suggested

“That might be months away.” Nat moaned, and hit her head against the pillow. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong!”

“Maybe all kids do this?”

“Yes, and I’m sure all kids are just allowed to do whatever they like without any sort of consequences.” Nat said sarcastically, then sat up in realisation “ _Oh!_ I’m saying ‘no’ but I’m not doing anything when she ignores me.” then her face fell again “Clint, how do parents punish kids? The ones that don’t shoot kids in the head for messing up I mean.”

“Don’t ask me.” Clint protested “My dad just hit us if we got in his way.”

“Oh yeah” Nat said, then “I’m sorry” because that had been insensitive.

Clint waved it away carelessly. “We could ask Maria?”

Ten minutes later, having checked Daisy is sound asleep and the baby monitor was working fine, they are knocking on Hill’s office door. Maria is, as usual, working late, but she puts it aside when she sees their faces.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing” Nat said hastily “Or well, nothing like what you were thinking.”

Maria relaxed significantly “What’s up then.”

“We were wondering how actual parents punish kids, you know, non-abusive ones?”

Whatever Maria had been expecting to come out of her mouth, from the look on the senior agents face, that had not been it. Maria looked shocked, and then deeply uncomfortable. “I’m not really the best person to ask” Maria said, looking more discomforted than Nat had ever seen her.

“Oh” Nat said, and didn’t really know what else to say.

“We should make a club” Clint tried to joke and both Nat and Maria sighed.

And that was how, an hour later, Coulson got back from a week long mission, with an Agent May Nat had only briefly met, and got immediately called to Hills office to be asked the same question. Coulson looked at the three of them, not saying anything but exuding a deep sense of concern and protective sadness. All three of them chose to ignore this completely. Finally, Coulson said “At this age, time-outs I think, but I’ll see if I can get someone to pick up some more parenting books for you.”

Coulson manages to get the books within two days, and Nat finishes all three in less than that. She, Clint, and Maria, by mutual, silent agreement never speak of it again. Natasha starts promising time-outs of 2 minutes when Daisy refuses to listen and the toddler takes to the change with furious wails and then grudging understanding that misbehaviour now came with consequences. Nat read about tantrums and ‘terrible twos’ with a sense of dawning dread and hopes that the books are exaggerating, even if she has a creeping feeling that they are not.

Her Pauchok turns 23 months and she and Clint go on another mission, going in after another shield team to deal with the situation the less experienced team couldn’t quite handle. Nat gets a knife wound cutting through the side of her stomach and keeps fighting for five minutes until the enemy is neutralised, then sits down to examine the wound and promptly passes out. Clint freaks out and calls for an evacuation, and Nat wakes up two days later when they take her off sedation to find herself with an achy side and, much worse, in medical. Twenty minutes and seven traumatised doctors later (one of whom might need stitches himself), she is out of medical. Both Hill and Coulson yell at her for another twenty minutes until Fury turns up to tell her that next time she gets hurt she’ll be left well alone when she comes off sedation and to try not to traumatise any more doctors as good doctors willing to live on a flying base are rather scarce. Then he gives her an official shield badge and informs her she is now a level 4 shield agent. Clint instantly demands some leave and announces he is taking Nat off the helicarrier for her mandatory injury leave. Nat wants to know where he’s taking her but Clint just says to pack warm clothes and then decides she isn’t to strain her stitches anyway and annoys her until she sits down on her bed and lets Clint pack for her. Daisy, giggling happily, helps him find things in their bunk and less than an hour later Nat finds herself in a quinjet with her daughter and her partner and still doesn’t know where they are going.

Where they are going turns out to be a farm in the middle of Iowa, with an old but still standing farmhouse and actual crops and livestock. All of which isn’t nearly as surprising as it should be, even when paired with the revelation that Clint has a _wife_! A wife with shoulder length blond hair, kind eyes and has apparently been waiting to meet her for ten months. Natasha watches her and Clint interact with stunned, flummoxed eyes and an odd sense of deja vu. She’s spied on dozens of husbands and wives over the years, and posed as a wife more than once, but she’s never seen any couple so clearly and deeply in love as Clint and Laura, and she tells herself she isn’t jealous.

And Laura makes it hard to be jealous. Welcoming Natasha with such open warmth that ten minutes after meeting her Natasha feels obligated to say “I’m an international assassin.”

“Yes I know, would you like some coffee?”

“I’ve killed innocent people.”

“That was before, sit down, I’ll put the kettle on, Clint, bring that box of biscuits out here, don’t just eat them all.”

And somehow, impossibly, Nat realised that Laura was, at least generally if not in details, aware of who she was and what she’d done, and she _just didn’t care_. Clint trusted her, and Clint cared about her and that was good enough for Laura.

Some days, Natasha could remember being Natalia Romanova so clearly it was like it was yesterday, like someone could scratch her skin and Natalia would come lunging out, vicious and deadly and smiling sweet, poison edged lies. She could remember trusting no-one and killing without a twinge of remorse. She could remember when the only person she cared about in the whole wide world was her Pauchok. She remembered when it was her against the entire planet to protect her baby. But she suspects that even when she was Natalia, she would have trusted Laura.

She watches the woman for all of an hour, then takes Daisy (still napping) with her as she searches the house from top to bottom. Clint must have known what she was doing but he doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t offer to come with her. He knows she has to do this alone. And when she is done, she gently wakes her Pauchok up and introduces her to Laura, and lets Clint’s wife hold her child. Clint watches her with a slight smirk creeping round the edge of his smile, and a _I told you we were going somewhere good_ look. Daisy falls in love with Laura perhaps only a split-second after Laura falls in love with Daisy, and Nat feels an odd sense of unrestrained happiness at the scene and something small and pained and unnamable creeping around the edge of her mind.

They stay for a week, and it is the strangest week of Natasha’s life so far. Not least because she doesn’t think she’s been so welcome so easily anywhere in her life, including the KGB base she’d been promoted to a month out of the red room. Laura was not only aware of who she was, ex-assassin and current agent and all, and didn’t care, but she also actively wanted her to stay. Despite the fact that she hadn’t seen her husband since he’d last visited 5 months ago (the two week disappearance now makes much more sense) Laura made a point to shove coffee and biscuits into Natasha’s hands and tell her where she was sleeping and ask her about what she liked to eat and a dozen other questions Nat had no idea how to answer and then backed off when Nat was unresponsive. It wasn’t until Nat went off to explore (search) the house that Laura grabbed Clint to start catching up.

Then there was the fact that, despite literally meeting her that day, Laura managed to make her feel just as much a part of the conversation over supper as she and Clint were. To her shock, Nat found herself being teased just as mercilessly for the disastrous cooking lessons as Clint was being, and found herself voluntarily telling the woman about rewiring all the new secure electric door locks on the rookies bunks to give them mild shocks whenever they touched the handle. Laura listened to the tale of them watching the frustrated level 1 and 2 agents trying to get into their bunks with great hilarity, and asked if they got caught.

“Technically no.” Nat said, deadpan.

“We got caught a week later.” Clint continued.

“When we messed with the key-cards.”

“Impressive how few highly trained shield agents don’t think of trying their card on the door to the left.”

“Caused a bit of chaos.”

“Fury made us undo it” Nat said sadly.

“We tried to convince him it was a training exercise in err, thinking outside the door.” Clint added

“Which is when he threatened us with paperwork.”

“Which didn’t work, it was too good a prank.”

“So Coulson threatened us with extra cooking lessons.”

“So we fixed the doors.” Clint finished.

Laura stared at them for a moment, and then laughed until she cried.

It was far from the first meal that Natasha had shared with friends – she, Daisy, Clint, Coulson, Maria and Fury had eaten together more than a few times – but it was almost unnerving how comfortable she felt with Laura. Natasha was not the black widow for nothing. She had developed not trusting people to an art form, she wouldn’t be alive now if she hadn’t. In Natalia’s life, too good to be true was always just that, too good to be true. A good meal was likely to be poisoned, a friendly face was a test with a gun in his or her pocket, a soft bed within the firing line from the window... Natasha didn’t trust easily.

But Laura was Clint’s and Clint was Natasha’s and even almost two decades of red room and KGB couldn’t quite stop Natasha from trusting Laura. It helped that Laura was Laura, and Natasha hadn’t been wrong reading someone in a very, very long time, and she could tell Laura Barton wouldn’t hurt a fly, or a spider. So Natasha, against everything her life should have taught her, trusted Laura. That too made the week strange.

But what really made the week strange was the sheer domesticity of the farm. Nat washed dishes after meals with Laura, she chopped wood with Clint, fixed the locks on the upstairs windows while her partner dealt with the broken plumbing, collected eggs on the way back from morning runs, was taught how to use a washing machine by Clint and got into a sword fight with a mop cleaning the kitchen. She and Daisy got up at the same time in the mornings and didn’t grab some breakfast viya the air-vents by drop-and-grab technique (an activity the shield canteen cooks were so used to by this point they’d attached a bell to the vent cover to reduce the number of morning heart attacks) but instead came downstairs for cereal or kasha (which Nat had stunned their cooking instructor, Clint and herself by making perfectly the first time. Their instructor had tried her on another Russian dish with a look of such hope Nat had felt genuinely bad when it burst into flames.). Instead of sparring after breakfast Nat found herself being marched back upstairs to let Laura change the bandage on her abdomen (her protests of being perfectly capable of changing her own bandage fell on selectively deaf ears and by the third day Nat had given up and just let the former nurse put a new dressing on it and scold her for doing too much strenuous activity. Nat could be selectively deaf too.). Days at the farm had patterns and norms and dishes to be cleaned and was so eerily domestic Nat couldn’t think of a stranger week in her life.

But the strangest thing of all for Natasha wasn’t being welcome or getting on with Laura or trusting her or even the domesticity. The strangest thing was how she felt watching Laura with Daisy.

Laura was undeniably and impressively good with Daisy. It was Laura who introduced both Nat and Daisy to bubble baths the first night, and to the concept of bath toys (Laura only had rubber ducks, but they were more than Daisy had ever had in a bath before and combined with the bubbles made a previously disliked bedtime routine a suddenly sought after activity. Nat sat on the side of the bath watching the blond play ‘find the duck’ with Daisy in the bubbles and felt somehow at once delighted at the smile on her Pauchoks face and achy right at the core of who she was.

It was Laura who made cookies the first morning and let Daisy help add ingredients and stir, and lick the mixing bowl out afterwards, which she explained solemnly to Nat and Clint was a childhood right of passage. Clint met Nat’s eyes and neither needed to say a word to communicate between them _We’re not trying this. We’d poison her._ Daisy, with flour covered hands and suspicious cookie-dough-coloured smears around her mouth proudly presented her mama with the first cookie and Nat smiled stupidly proudly at her little Pauchok. And yet, inside, something twisted, just a little.

It was Laura who held Daisy’s hand as they went around the farm, Nat watching through a camera lens from a few metres behind, showing the almost 2 year old the chickens and the pigs and letting her gently pet the two goats. Nat took almost a hundred photos before she passed the camera over to Clint to give in to her Pauchok’s pleas for a piggy-back ride. It was Laura who announced they should have a picnic, given Daisy had never had one (Nat didn’t know what a picnic was but she nodded along) and managed to somehow fit enough food for 10 people into a basket and they all went marching off into the hillside surrounding the farm. Daisy loved the picnic, loved running around over the sprawling, grass covered hills, so different from the mats and metal of the helicarrier gyms, and Nat felt her heart soar at her Pauchok’s joy, but beat just that little bit too quickly as she watched Laura teach Daisy to play tag.

She wasn’t jealous. Jealously didn’t feel like this. Jealously wasn’t this thing that stalked around the edge of her mind, and opened an icily hollow pit in her stomach. This wasn’t jealousy.

Jealously couldn’t make the backs of her eyes sting as she watched Laura help Daisy ‘climb’ a tree, it couldn’t make her feel like she was balancing on the edge of a cliff, it couldn’t make her breath catch with unnamed fear and her stomach clench with reasonless dread.

They slept in the barn that night, Nat caving to Daisy’s puppy-dog eyes and pleas to stay outside. All four of them sleep curled on a blanket thrown over a pile of hay; Nat on one end and Daisy next to her, Laura on her other side and Clint on the other end. Clint gets up just after dawn and smirks a little over breakfast as he shows Nat the photo he took, her face soft with sleep and her left hand pinned down under Daisy’s brown curls. It’s one of the sweetest photos of her Pauchok she’s got but that doesn’t quite explain the hard lump in her throat as she asks for a copy or the way she struggles to wrench her eyes away from the image of her Pauchok curled between her and Laura.

The day before they have to go back to the Helicarrier they all drive to the closest town to do some shopping. Daisy is astonished by the sights and sounds of the supermarket and refuses to be placed in the child’s seat of the trolley. Natasha feels a burst of inexplicable relief followed by an equally inexplicable burst of guilt as she picks Daisy up and lets her cling to her as they went around the small store. She takes Daisy to a nearby little toy shop afterwards, and lets her Pauchok pick something for herself. It’s not often Daisy has something new, and she’s never gotten to pick something out for herself before. Daisy finds a sticker book and holds it up to her mama with the same look Clint had worn when Coulson had presented him with acid arrowheads and he hadn’t quite been sure it could be real. Nat buys it for her and sneakily buys a pack of glow in the dark stars (its difficult to get something in secret with the toddler literally in her arms, but Natasha isn’t an international spy for nothing.). She tells herself they are to give Daisy on her birthday but deep at the back of her mind, in the pile of things she isn’t ready to acknowledge yet, she knows what they are for.

They go to a playground after the shop, and for the first time in her life, Daisy plays with other kids her age. Nat watches everyone sharply, Clint her constant shadow as Laura helps her on the play equipment, but nothing at all happens and after a few minutes Nat remembers that no one knows who they are, and no one who might has any idea they are here. This place is safe.

Natasha doesn’t know why such a good thought can be so unbearably sad. She isn’t sure she wants to know why. They get ice-cream after the playground, and her daughter’s mint-choc-chip smeared smile is so happy it seems to cut Natasha to the core. She takes more photos that afternoon than she took on the picnic and she can’t justify it even to herself. Laura and Clint help her sort through the photos and delete the bad ones, and Laura suggests she start a scrapbook, telling her that she’d had one when she was little, and she was going to make one for her kids when she had them. Clint’s eyes lit up at the idea and he almost drove back into town to buy coloured paper and glue but Laura, pointing out it was almost 11pm refused to let him. Natasha chose not to think about why she felt like she was being hollowed out from the inside.

It wasn’t until she brought Daisy downstairs the morning they were leaving that Natasha understood. It wasn’t until she was carrying dirty dishes through to the kitchen and heard Laura ask Daisy what she wanted to do on her last day that she understood. It wasn’t until Daisy piped up “No! Stay!” that Natasha finally realised and she felt her heart shatter into a hundred thousand unrepairable pieces and she understood what she had to do. What she had known, from the very first night, she had to do. She stood there, body frozen in utter, total devastation, and allowed a single tear to burn its way from behind her eyes and down her cheek before she forced herself to put the dishes down, and wipe it off her face, and shut her feelings down with a vicious force she hadn’t used in 20 months. She took two deep breaths, forced all the tension out of her body, and walked back into the kitchen to suggest a picnic lunch.

Laura doesn’t trust either her or Clint to help make sandwiches, so she goes for a walk with Daisy around the farm, her Pauchok’s eyes still fascinated and delighted by the animals but hers barely leaving her little girl’s face. Laura and Clint are waiting for them when they get back to the front door and they all set off together. Nat lets Daisy ride piggy-back, even though it’s not the plan, but Daisy runs around so much when they stop and spread out blankets and things that it doesn’t matter. Clint has found a little soccer ball from somewhere and they all kick it gently around and Nat tries to ignore how the sound of her Pauchoks laughter makes her chest cave in. She encourages Daisy to walk all the way back, even though Daisy is drooping and exhausted by that point, and when they get back she tucks her daughter into her travel cot and silently tucks the glow in the dark stars into the side for her Pauchok to find when she wakes up. She makes no sound as she packs up her stuff and pretends her chest doesn’t feel tight and awful. She ducks her head into Laura and Clints’ room and tells him she’ll meet him in the quinjet and to go on ahead. Clint asks why and Nat gives some stupid nonsense excuse and her partner asks what's wrong. Nat pretends to be all confused but Clint’s having none of it and points out she’s been acting strangely all day. Natasha knows, because she knows Clint, that there’s no point trying to deny it further, so she just shrugs and asks him to go get the quinjet ready. Clint’s eyes are concerned, but he gives in and goes, and that’s all Nat needs.

Then she stands over her Pauchok’s cot just staring at her child. She thinks, in those endless minutes, that she is never in her life going to forget this moment. Forget the exact way Daisy’s hair is curled against her cheek, the tiny wrinkle above eyes scrunched up in sleep, the calm, even breaths her little girl was giving. She stood drinking in the sight of her child for the last time and reminded herself of all the reasons she had to do this.

The farm was safe. The helicarrier was a heavily armed flying military base staffed with highly trained and very deadly agents.

The farm was almost completely unknown and unconnected to her. Shield was the known agency of the Black Widow, hated and hunted by KGB and known to have a child.

Laura was an ex-nurse and successful commercial farmer. She was the Black Widow, spy, agent, assassin, murderer.

Laura had started her career saving lives. She was forever stained red by the blood of her victims.

Laura was a mother. She was a monster.

Laura was safe. She was not.

She took one last, agonising look at her Pauchok, grabbed her bag, and went downstairs. She forced herself to act normally as she said goodbye to Laura, as she said thank you for so much more than the woman was experienced enough to know, and then she picked up her bag, and headed to the door.

“Errr, Nat? You’ve forgotten Daisy.” Laura pointed out from behind her, sounding awkward.

Natasha stopped, halfway across the room, and forced herself to breathe, to open her mouth, to speak. No matter how hard she was trying, she couldn’t keep the emotion from her voice as she said “No. I haven’t.”

Laura Barton wasn’t Clint’s wife for no reason. So unlike the former mercenary in so many ways, but Laura was every bit as smart as the archer, and Nat didn’t need to say anything else for silence to descend between them, a silence heavier than Natasha had heard in her entire life.

Laura wouldn’t turn Daisy away, Natasha was sure of it, she was too good a woman and a mother to do so. But when she opened her mouth she still felt like her chest was caving in, crumpling into the abyss her stomach and lungs had turned into, as she said “Daisy needs you.”

There were two steps behind her then Laura spoke from over her shoulder in a voice so flat even _Natasha_ can’t tell what she’s thinking “Look at me.”

Natasha doesn’t think she can bear to look at Laura, to see what she’s doing reflected in the other woman’s eyes. To see the weight of what she’s doing on her face, to feel any more sharply the loss that was carving her heart out of her chest. She knows what she has to do, has never failed to do what she has to to protect her Pauchok. But even so, she isn’t sure she can look at Laura and not run upstairs to claim her baby girl.

So this is why Natasha has her eyes tightly closed as she turns around. This is why Natasha is so out of it she doesn’t even notice the slight brush of air against her cheek which is the only warning she gets before Laura slaps her hard enough to fling her face to the side.

Natasha’s eyes snap open as pain explodes across her cheek but all she can do is gape in utter, floored shock at the woman in front of her.

She’d hit her.

_Laura Barton_ had hit her.

Laura Barton, who Natasha had been absolutely, 100% sure wouldn’t hurt a fly, had _hit_ her. Natasha hadn’t read someone wrong since she was a child! How, _how_??? She’d _hit_ her!

“ _Daisy needs her_ _ **mother**_!!” Laura said, every syllable enunciated and utterly furious.

“Her mother is a monster.” Natasha said, still reeling too much to censor her words.

“Her mother is a hero” Laura replied, clearly and with finality. Natasha opened her mouth to disagree but Laura cut her off with a sharp gesture of her hand. “No. You’re going to listen to me. I know who you are. I know the kinds of things you’ve done. The kinds of things Clint has done too. I know you were a child, years younger than even Clint was when he was pulled into that kind of work and with even less choice than he had. I know you got yourself out. I know you chose to let shield take you in. I know you have saved lives. I know you are working to save more lives. I know you have overcome things no veteran should ever have to even see nevermind a child or a young single mother experience! I know you fight through these things every day to get up and save lives. Don’t you ever call yourself a monster again Natasha Romanoff. Ever.”

Laura Barton, Natasha notes in a distant, tiny part of her mind not currently occupied by more pressing things, is distinctly more formidable than she’d given her credit for. Natasha can find nothing to say, cannot find it in herself to argue with the conviction in the furious woman’s voice. She just stands there, gaping at the woman she’d labelled harmless, too frozen to even raise a hand to her burning cheek. The silence is instead broken by the front door banging open and Clint coming back in, only to skid to a sudden stop as he took in the room. Took in his civilian wife’s furious stance and the flaming red handprint on the face of one of the deadliest assassins in the world.

“ _What the_ _ **hell**_ _?”_

It was like Clint had broken a spell. Natasha took a tiny little gasping breath in, and Laura’s face softens a fraction.

“Go get your daughter” she says, and Natasha feels air properly filling her lungs for the first time since she was standing in the kitchen than morning. She half runs to the stairs and up, half-flying up the steps and to the room she’d slept in for most of the past week. Her Pauchok is still exactly as she left her, the same measured breaths, the same curl of hair on her cheek, and Natasha collapses to her knees by the cot and cries harder than she’s ever cried in her entire life. Her whole body shakes with devastating sobs as the emotions of an entire week of unnamed dread and one of the worst day’s of her life comes tumbling out of her body. The wooden floor is hard beneath her body as she curls up on her side, her stomach clenching and unclenching with the force of her tears, and she knows she has never cried like this in her life. Then Clint’s strong arms are picking her up off the floor, bracing as she leans into him and they stumble to the bed. Clint’s arms are steady around her, his voice a gentle monologue as she keeps crying until her throat is raw and she has no tears left in her body and can only hiccup and gasp in ragged breaths. Clint doesn’t say anything as she finally starts to calm down, to concentrate on calming her uneven breaths and making her shaking muscles go still. When she finally looks up Clint is still silent, his face one part understanding, one part furious, and one part achingly gentle.

Neither of them says a word, not even signed, but when Natasha stands up and picks up Daisy’s bag, Clint is already reaching for the pile of her clothes. They pack in silence, filling the bag quickly, and Nat gently picks her still sleeping daughter out of the travel cot and supports her as Clint packs it away and slides it back into its own bag. She cradles her Pauchok as they go downstairs again, and she gently hands Daisy to Clint before approaching a calmer Laura and letting the woman pull her into a hug. She returned the embrace tightly and whispered into the woman’s shoulder.

“Thank you”

“Come back and visit next time you can ok?”

“Of course” Natasha said.

Neither she nor Clint ever tell anyone about the conversation they have on the flight back to the helicarrier, and neither of them ever answer Coulson, Maria and Furys’ questions about why exactly she came back from injury leave with a fresh bruise on her cheek.

Luckily, Daisy distracts all three of them by finally waking up (Nat really had thoroughly tired the toddler out) and spotting them and announcing happily “Uncle Phil! Auntie Maria! Grandpa Fury!”. Natasha turned just in time to see Clint’s glee filled grin confirm just who was responsible for this before her partner ran for it before either Hill or Fury could fully react.

At least that explained why Clint had packed mugshots of his superior officers to go on holiday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got to admit, I enjoyed writing the dynamics between Clint, Laura and Natasha in this chapter. They're all really interesting characters. Not sure if I've written them really OOC, but I hope not.
> 
> Also, if anyone knows why the end note from the first chapter keeps reappearing in the new chapters, could you tell me? I can't work out how to get rid of it.
> 
> Comments make me very happy :-)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coulson miscalculates, Clint and Nat play mafia, Daisy turns two, Budapest happens, and Maria is really not paid enough to deal with all this.

Clint got sent off on another mission that Nat, despite protest and pleading, wasn’t allowed on until her side finished healing. He returned with three bags of balloons, a hideous amount of sugary sweets and an official reprimand for ‘knocking out his mission partner so he can change the plan and almost get himself shot’, or, that was what Coulson wrote on the reprimand anyway. Clint hid the entire collection, minus the reprimand, in his bunk, and they pretended they weren’t planning anything at all. Coulson condemned Clint to an entire afternoon of training the level 1 rookies. Clint goes round looking miserable for an entire morning until Natasha suggests a way to make it more interesting and they go break into an administration office to work out which rookies he was going to get and make a few preparations.

A day later Clint takes over a carefully selected briefing room, waves the 25 baby agents into it, and pulls out a pack of cards which he starts shuffling and then handing out as he explains the exercise. He does an impressively good job of sounding professional.

“Today you will be working on communication and observation skills. Communication _with_ your team, and observation _of_ your team. Each of you will get a card, and you will not tell anyone what that card is. If you get an Ace, you are a double agent, if you get a Jack you are a field doctor, if you get a King, you are an undercover superior, if you get anything else you are just a normal agent. If you are a double agent, you are trying to kill everyone else. If you are a doctor, you may give someone treatment, which may or may not succeed. If you are an undercover superior, you may investigate someone. Now before I hand out the cards, I want you to imagine you are on mission, you have infiltrated an enemy base, but someone betrayed you and you are now locked in. Someone on your team is a double agent, and they have reinforcements coming in an undetermined time. To get out, you must find and eliminate the double agent. The exercise will run like this, you will have day and night. During the ‘day’ you may talk and communicate among yourselves to try to find out, or hide, who the double agent is, and each day vote to execute one agent. During the night, you will all sleep, and I will make you wake up one by one. Any questions?”

A rookie raised their hand “Are we playing Mafia?”

“No rookie, we are playing _Shield Mafia_.” Clint said, his professional facade cracking a bit as his smirk developed just a little too much of an evil edge. “Right then, it’s night time, everyone go to sleep.” and then he hit a switch on the wall to plunge the room into pitch darkness.

It should probably be mentioned at this point that Clint hadn’t actually put an Ace, Jack or King in the deck he handed out. He _had_ however greased the hinges of every single entrance and exit to the room. He had also given Natasha a comm.

It was important, the two of them had rationalised, that the new rookies could work under pressure. Which was why they had gotten photos of each and every rookie and photo-shopped faces onto dead bodies and blood onto faces. Natasha silently opened the oiled door, night vision glasses on her face, and chose her target. A careful blow to the pressure points in the neck and she was removing the agent from the room. When the light turned back on again, there was one rookie missing, and a photo where he had been. There had not been a single noise indicating his exit. 24 highly trained young agents that had made it through the academy and been considered skilled enough to be assigned to the helicarrier gave assorted reactions from flinching to screaming.

“Unfortunately, during the night, the double agent took his chance to avenge a grudge against one of your team, and” Clint paused to glance across the room and remember what they’d done to that particular photo “slit his throat and removed his eyeballs. Now, which of your number do you think this was?”

Five minutes later Clint opens one door from the briefing room and ‘invites’ the chosen agent to step through. The door closes behind the agent. A gunshot sounded. 23 academy graduates’ eyes widened.

“That, that wasn’t real was it?”

Clint just smirked “Night is falling again.” he continued, and switched off the lights.

Fifteen minutes, one beheaded agent and another long conversation later, a second rookie steps through the door. His horrified question of “Is that a bodybag?” a moment before the door closed and three seconds before there was another gunshot was perfect, if entirely accidental, timing. The 21 remaining agents looked nervously between Clint and the door. Unheard by any of them, Natasha is betting Clint that one of them will try to run away within the next two ‘nights’.

It is three nights, and Clint wins the bet to Nat’s annoyance. The 15 ‘surviving’ agents now resembled nervous wrecks. It didn’t help that the photos were getting more and more graphic. The rookie that tried to run found every door locked. For some reason, this didn’t soothe either him or the rest of his training team, all of which were now shifting around in their chairs and looking stressed beyond belief. Clint’s running count of the number of variations on “Where have the others gone” is up to 31. The ‘daytime’ conversations have developed a level of paranoia Fury would be proud of and not a single one of the rookies’ now trusts another. Even Clint is having a hard time keeping track of the number of interrogations and counter interrogations happening at once, although both he and Nat were noting the fact that the quality of the questions and follow up questions were improving markedly.

A night later, and another two rookies down, one of the remaining (now less than half the original) rookies asked “When does this exercise end? It must have been two hours by now.”

“Oh, we’ll finish when the double agent is revealed. Or when we’ve killed you all, whichever comes first.” Clint said, grinning evilly. The rookies fidgeted and nervously fingered the empty holsters at their hips (They’d confiscated the guns on entrance. Rookies tended to be rather trigger happy, and they didn’t want anyone to actually get hurt.).

“Err, and what happens when the double agent is revealed?” another rookie asked, eyeing the mini-gallery of gruesome photos and the door where half his missing teammates had vanished through.

Clint, entirely unconcerned with this since he hadn’t actually given out any roles, shrugged “The same way double agents are always dealt with. I’m sure you’ve all read the shield handbook.” and plunged the room back into darkness.

It was at this point that Natasha released a cage of mice into the room (stolen from the labs). Three ran over rookies’ feet, and the room erupted into screaming chaos. When the light was switched back on, three agents were on the table brandishing makeshift weapons against invisible assailants, two had passed out and the remaining seven were plastered against the wall. One agent was missing. As was the, now expected, gory photograph. In its place was a pool of blood dripping from a chair onto the floor (blood also stolen from the labs). Two more rookies passed out. Clint mentally marked them down as liabilities in the field.

A full half hour, and another ‘executed’ agent later, and they up the ante again: a knife, still dripping blood, is stabbed through the back of a chair when the light is switched on again. Clint lazily observes that they’d better catch the double agent soon or they’ll be no-one left. The ‘condemned’ rookie chosen attempts to break out of the room and eventually goes through the door with a battle cry and fists raised. There is the usual gunshot and no more sounds. A dead silence follows. Clint switches the light out again and commands the ‘double agent’ to select someone to kill.

Natasha slides into the room again, and runs a sharpener across a knife. Once. Twice. Then puts it down and advances on her target.

“ _It’s me! I’m the double agent! Don’t kill me! I have information! I can give you my handler, Brosvisk! Please!_ ”

Clint stopped. Natasha stopped.

They looked at each other, and slowly, Nat signed “Brosvisk’s KGB”

Clint made a hand gesture that wasn’t taught in most polite sign language classes then added “What now?”

“Arrest him?”

“We’re going to have to tell Fury.”

“Bags not telling Coulson.”

“It was your idea!”

“The photos and gunshots were yours”

“You stole the fake blood.”

“You stole the mice.”

“Fine, but you have to tell Hill and Fury.”

Nat made another gesture that wasn’t taught in most sign language courses but nodded. “You arrest him, I’ll go collect Daisy from Maria and get us both in trouble.”

They turned back to the 11 remaining baby agents. The terrified young double agent was still babbling about how useful he could be and promising to sing like a bird. Nat pulled off her night vision glasses and switched the lights back on. No less than 9 rookies screamed aloud to find an extra person in the room. Natasha gave the double agent a tooth filled smirk and left viya a door that had been locked seconds previously.

Maria listened to the first two sentences of her explanation and called Fury and Coulson, then wondered aloud whether she was having a particularly vivid nightmare.

“I didn’t know you were imaginative enough to come up with this.” Natasha said, picking up Daisy from where she was sleeping on the sofa.

“I’m not, dammit” Maria cursed, and Nat shot her a glare, indicating with her chin the sleeping toddler in her arms. Maria sent her a look so incredulous she had to bite her lip not to laugh.

And that was how the myth that Fury had sent Strike Team Delta to unearth an enemy agent in shield started. Fury allowed it to persist purely on the basis that it made it sound like he’d actually been aware there was a KGB agent among his new recruits. It was also coincidentally the day most of shield began to view Black Widow and Hawkeye with an instinctive, near-primal terror. It didn’t matter that all the rookies bar one returned, and that that one was only arrested and sent to the Fridge, the terrified accounts of the rookies that had survived the first few ‘nights’ spread through the helicarrier like wildfire on steroids. Clint thought it was hilarious, and took to hiding out near the lower level agents’ bunks and shouting boo at passer-bys until Coulson threatened to give him so much paperwork he’d forget what his bow looked like. Nat thought it was rather useful and sent a good message to the KGB. Hill gave them a half hour lecture, an unofficial reprimand (making it official revealed that Fury had had no idea about the double agent), and banned them from training the rookies until otherwise stated (which Clint and Nat both considered a win). Coulson admitted that, in hindsight, he should have supervised what Clint was doing with the rookies. Clint and Nat did concede that they might have gotten a little bit carried away. 

\--------------

A week later, Daisy turned two years old, and celebrated this important occasion by waking up bright and early at 4.30am and jumping on an optimistic Natasha (who had of course woken up when something changed in the room but had clung to the tiny, tiny possibility that she might go back to sleep. She didn’t.) shrieking “I’m two! I’m two!”

“Happy birthday Pauchok” she said sleepily.

“I’m two.”

“Mmmm” Nat said, stifling a yawn “You’re a big girl now.”

“When am I bigger’n Uncle Clint?”

“Umm, it doesn’t really work like that sweetheart.”

“Why-y?”

“Because while you’re growing bigger Clint’s growing bigger too.”

“Oh” Daisy said, looking sad, then perking up “That’s mean. Clint’s mean. He won’t stop growing so I can catch up. Meanie.”

“Very mean” Nat said, face perfectly straight.

“We should prank him. For being a meanie.” Daisy said seriously, and Nat made a tiny strangled sound as she swallowed her laughter. Oh, her daughter was going to be _trouble_.

“Well, it is your birthday” she said, pretending great reluctance as Daisy cheered and bounced on her stomach, knocking all the air out of her before she pulled her off.

And so Clint celebrated the important occasion by waking up bright and early to a toddler with a face screwed up with concentration and a can of shaving cream. Clint indulged Daisy and pretended to be asleep until he got a face full of the stuff at which point he ‘woke up’ with great theatrics to the music of Daisy’s hysterical giggles. When he’d finally finished pretending to be outraged he yawned genuinely and shot Nat a look and a few quick signs.

_This is your fault._

Nat gestured back completely unrepentant. _Hey, I got woken up earlier! “_ It was all Daisy’s idea, wasn’t it Pauchok?”

“All mine” Daisy confirmed, proudly nodding her head “Mama helped steal the cream though!”

“This was _your_ idea!” Clint said, eyes widening “Daisychain's first prank! I’m so proud!”

“ ‘s my birthday too!” Daisy announced, jumping up and down.

“Really! This must be celebrated! This, this merits” Clint paused to let the suspense build “ _chocolate waffles_ ”

“ _No._ ” Natasha interjected hastily. She remembered the last time Daisy had had chocolate waffles. She remembered the last time _Clint_ had had chocolate waffles. Most of the helicarrier remembered the last time Clint had had chocolate waffles.

Two pouting faces turned to her “But it’s my birthday” Daisy said, giving her baby eyes.

“But it’s her birthday” Clint said, trying to do puppy dog eyes with surprising success.

Nat internally sighed “Half a chocolate waffle Pauchok” she conceded “But none for you Clint.”

“But...” Clint pouted, then perked up suddenly “Hey, I don’t need permission!”

“I’ll tell Coulson.”

Clint went back to pouting. “Awwww”

After breakfast (during which Nat pretended not to notice that Clint had also sneaked a chocolate waffle – that way she had plausible deniability and wouldn’t get in trouble for whatever Clint might do) they took Daisy swimming for a bit, both to burn off some energy and to occupy her for a couple of hours while Coulson and Maria fulfilled their end of the plan. Then they brought a distinctly damper Daisy back to her and Nat’s bunk where Maria, Coulson and Fury were waiting.

“Happy birthday Pauchok” Nat said, and opened the door. Daisy’s squeal of delight could be heard in the deck above but none of them could bring themselves to tell her off. They had filled Nat’s bunk with balloons. Squealing was a fair response for a two year old. More than that, they had filled the bunk with balloons and hidden boxes, and Nat took a moment to realise that Daisy had clearly not burned off enough energy while swimming given the hyper excitement coming off the two year old in waves.

She found Maria’s present first, a small art kit (small enough it had likely been slipped into a kit bag on the way back from a mission, but it still more than doubled Daisy’s existing art supplies. Military bases didn’t tend to stock much in the way of craft glue and pompoms.), and waded through the balloons to give ‘Auntie Maria’ a hug. Next to be discovered was a box of books from Fury (featuring 5 different languages) and got a ‘thank you Grandpa’ in response which earned Clint a thoroughly dirty look. Laura had wrapped up a packet of face-paints for Daisy and given it to Clint to pass on. Coulson had given Daisy a couple of children’s songs cds. Clint had given her two family sized jars of Nutella which got a look of utter enraptured delight from Daisy and a sign from Nat that was not officially in any sign language in the world but clearly translated to _I’m going to kill you in your sleep._

“ _I can make chocolate waffles!_ ” Daisy announced, ecstatic.

_Painfully_ Nat added. Clint edged slightly away from her. Nat distracted Daisy and signalled frantically to Coulson who was usually the most responsible of any of them (including both the director and deputy-director of Shield). “Do you want to see what I got you Pauchok?”

Daisy, still young enough to be easily distracted, put down the jars and waded through the multicoloured sea of balloons over to her. Coulson quickly vanished the jars (which Nat made a mental note to hide herself later. Coulson was responsible but he was also unfortunately a complete pushover.). Luckily, the contents of the basket Nat carefully pulls out from under her bed is enough to push chocolate spread completely out of Daisy’s mind.

It hadn’t taken that much work to get one of the scientists to have a kitten picked up with the monthly supplies of mice (even considering Nat had stolen a crate of those mice from those same labs). What _had_ taken a lot of work was convincing Maria to allow it. But Daisy’s expression as she opened the basket made every bit of time she’d spent pleading and convincing Maria worth it and more.

In this world too Daisy named her kitten Nutella, and for some reason it sends a ripple of unease through Natasha, but she puts it down to her daughter clearly not having completely forgotten about the chocolate spread. But the unease soon passed and was all but forgotten about as they pushed balloons away to make a space for Daisy and Nutella to play in the middle of the (already very crowded) bunk.

As for what happened that afternoon, the adults involved mutually agreed to never tell another living soul about it (although Laura did eventually get the story from Daisy) and when asked would simply reply “we don’t talk about the face-paint incident.”

A week later Nat drops Daisy off at Maria’s office and heads off with Clint for a quick in and out mission in Budapest. Budapest is supposed to be a quick ‘locate and neutralise’ mission. Budapest is supposed to be simple and straightforward. Budapest is a squirming of recognition and unease in her stomach. Budapest is FUBAR within half an hour. Budapest is being sold out before they even land. Budapest is far too many enemies spread all across the city. Budapest is cat and mouse and sewers and warehouses. Budapest is bullets and blood and the crack of Clint’s arm as it snapped. Budapest is running and running and ‘like _hell_ I’m leaving you behind Hawkeye!’. Budapest is knives and blood and makeshift bandages around her arms and ribs. Budapest is three days of violent clawing for survival. Budapest is the forging of a bond that could take on the entire world. Budapest is ending up crouched on a narrow ledge on the wrong side of a bridge wall. Budapest is one bullet left and two guns approaching. Budapest is no-where left to run. Budapest is Clint on the ledge beside her with two bullets in his leg. Budapest is looking at the gun rising to her head and turning to the gun aiming at Clint’s and Clint’s voice rough but decided next to her.

“You promised me.”

But Nat only has one bullet left and in front of her there is a bullet with Clint’s name on it. Natasha raised her gun.

“ _You_ _promised me!_ ”

“I lied.”

The crack of three guns echoes in quick succession and three bullets fly. Her bullet fires first and it hits true. Clint’s named bullet fires second but hers has already struck and it flies wide. Her named bullet fires third but Clint’s hands are desperate and furious around her waist and she is falling backwards and her shoulder is exploding with pain but at least it isn’t her throat. Then they hit the river and the current is too strong and Clint has a _broken arm_ and a _shot up leg_ and her shoulder and cuts are utter agony but she will _not_ let Clint drown and Clint _refuses_ to let her drown and somehow, somehow they both make it out of the river alive.

Budapest is finally making extraction and stumbling up the ramp of the quinjet soaked, bloody, and exhausted to the very core. Budapest is finding out they somehow managed to take out two thirds of the crime mob in the city. Budapest is leaning on the side of the plane beside Clint and neither of them speaking but both refusing to leave the other, even though Clint is _furious_ and Nat utterly unrepentant, because they need to _feel_ that the other is alive.

They get sent to medical as soon as they land and aren’t allowed out (under threat of the worst paperwork Maria can dig up _and_ extra cooking lessons) for two days. Clint is still barely speaking to her afterwards, and Budapest has brought them closer than Natasha had dreamed she could be with anyone (even with Daisy because that was different) but somehow Clint manages to cling to her and angrily ignore her at the same time. Coulson takes them to the senior agents break room (unofficially theirs because no one else actually used it) and makes them non-hospital food and Daisy delights in having them both back. Coulson puts up with her and Clint’s behaviour until Daisy is worn out and put down for a nap in Maria’s office and then demands “Alright, what’s up with you two?”.

Clint shoots an angry glare at her and then looks away. Nat rolls her eyes and tries to pretend it doesn’t matter. “Clint’s pissed because I lied to him.”

Clint look of simmering anger boils back into fury in an instant “You think I’m pissed because of _that?_ ”

“Well what else?” Nat shot back, even though she knew exactly why Clint was really mad at her.

“ _ **You promised me!!**_ ”

Nat almost retreated, thrown by the depth of Clint’s anger, but “I was never going to save myself! You knew that!”

“No. I didn’t.” Clint said, his voice quiet now and it’s almost worse. “I didn’t know because you _gave me your word_!”

The trust Clint revealed in that sentence, the trust Nat was pretty sure she’d just lost, tore at her, but “I couldn’t let you die Clint.”

“We agreed!” Clint snarled “ _You_ live, _you_ walk away. You _promised_!”

“Oh, because my life is worth _so_ much more than yours” Nat spat back, the sarcasm in her voice sharp enough to cut.

“ _You have a daughter!_ ”

“ _You have a niece! And a wife!”_

“Oh don’t tell me that’s why you did it.” Clint snarled back “You did it because you think you owe the world your life! Well guess what Nat, I’m your partner, and that isn’t your fucking decision to make!”

“ _ **It’s my debt!”**_ Nat screamed “ _Mine!_ _It’s my debt to pay. You’re not dying for me Clint Barton!_ ”

“ _Like hell it’s your debt! You think you’re the only one that’s done bad things? Sacrificing yourself won’t undo them!”_

“ _Nor will sacrificing_ _ **you!!**_ ”

“Both of you sit down and **SHUT! UP!** ”

She and Clint froze. Commander Hill (and it was very definitely the Commander just then) was standing up, feet set and hands crossed across her chest and her face set in an expression that both of them knew meant she had had _enough_. They sat. Coulson looked back and forth between them looking like he slightly regretted asking and more than slightly wanted to lecture them both.

“Romanoff. Explain.” Hill snaps, and Nat knows she means facts not opinions.

“I promised Clint if it came down to him or me, I would live. It looked like it had come down to it in Budapest and I saved his life instead.”

“I see.” Hill said, but it was Maria who spoke next. “Are you actually talking about anything in therapy? The truth please.”

“I talk about Daisy.” Natasha hedged.

“So not really.” Maria stated, and Nat couldn’t hold her friend’s eyes and dropped her gaze to the floor.

Maria sighed, then addressed them both again “Right, you two are going to talk about this calmly, like adults, or I’m going to send both of you to stand in the corner until you are ready to be nice. Clear? Good.”

Then she turned around and left, Coulson following with a nervous glance back at his now red-faced agents.

“I’m not sorry.” Natasha said finally, defiantly.

“I know.” Clint said heavily. “Why do you think I’m so angry?”

Natasha sighed, suddenly exhausted to the core. “I’m sorry I lied to you.”

“Daisy needs you Nat.”

“I know” Nat said, guilt twisting in her stomach but “I can’t watch you die Clint.”

“I can’t watch you die either.”

Nat sighed aloud and let her head thunk backwards onto the wall “It better not come down to it again then.” she said.

“Don’t lie to me again. Not over something important.”

“Ok” Natasha said, and she meant it and she let Clint see she meant it.

“Ok” Clint echoed, and offered her a smile, and Nat knew she was forgiven. “Want to go spar?”

“They’ll lock us back in medical if we even walk into a gym.” Nat pointed out.

“Oh yeah” Clint remembered, face twisting into a whine “Want to go uhhhh, colour with Daisy?” he suggested finally.

“Wake my daughter up from a nap and I’ll put you back in medical myself.” Nat said, although they both knew it was an empty threat.

To cut a long story short, Maria, Coulson and Clint ended up introducing Nat to the pinball machine in one of the common rooms they rarely entered. Nat, despite incredible hand eye coordination and reflexes proved to be spectacularly bad at it, and Clint laughed himself sick at her.

That night Nat for the first time really considered the sense of deja vu she felt when Clint knocked questioningly on her door and met her haunted eyes with his own. She wondered, in a small corner of the back of her mind, whether Shield had completely fixed her brain. She wondered whether she was still programmed to serve the KGB because the alternative, the only other explanation for how she’d known Clint would come before he did was that this wasn’t real, and she refused to even consider that. She dismissed the feeling in the light of morning, putting it down to the influence of her nightmares. After all, she knew Clint well by this point. It wasn’t a stretch to know that he wouldn’t want to face the night alone anymore than she did. Even if he’d never done it before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got to admit, shield mafia is one of my favourite parts of the story! 
> 
> Comments make me very happy! :-)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy hits the terrible twos, and Nat and Clint are terrible, terrible patients.

They weren’t allowed back onto the field for over a month, at which point Natasha got sent on her first proper undercover assignment since joining shield. It’s three weeks long and she’s miserable, but she’s still the Black Widow, and she’s still the best and the op takes down enough bad guys that there is a small silver lining to being away from her Pauchok for that long. Still, she manages to get a long weekend off out of Fury for it for both her and Clint, and they fly to Laura’s for it. The weekend is one of the best Natasha can ever remember having, with Daisy insisting on having both her and Laura’s attention at all times. Clint, who had seen Daisy everyday for the last three weeks and witnessed how much she’d missed her mama, put up with his partner and wife being monopolised with only a little pouting, and Nat in return took Daisy on long walks in the mornings to let Clint catch up with his wife. In the evenings the adults all sat together, talking, and Nat wondered if this was what normal people did, if this was normal life.

But the weekend ended, and they flew back to shield to be handed a new mission (this one mercifully hours short) and life fell back into its usual breakneck pace, full of training, missions and avoiding other agents, and woven throughout, the pressures, joys and frustrations of raising an increasingly strong willed two year old. Some days felt like so much was crammed in that Natasha felt like she never slowed down, never mind stopped. Daisy hit the terrible twos with a vengeance, and a dozen times a day Nat found herself clashing wills with a two year old that had absorbed her and Clints’ attitude to rules and mischief, Maria’s stubbornness, Coulson’s sweet tooth, Fury’s determination and all of their knack for trouble. Some days Nat felt like tearing her hair out in frustration, and her therapist’s awkward comment that that was actually normal was somehow the most useless and encouraging thing she’d ever heard in her life. On the rare occasions she found herself with ten minutes spare she scoured the baby books for guidance but the advice rarely worked out in practice as the book suggested, even when the books did have something to suggest.

It did not help that Daisy, apart from everything else, was _clever_. She thought of and did things none of them had even thought of forbidding, and while she was a joy to be around much of the time, she had an impressive skill for winding people up when she didn’t get her own way. Natasha returned from one 36 hour mission with Clint exhausted and ready to collapse into bed only for Coulson to meet her with a smug looking Daisy in tow wearing what looked like one of Clint’s shirts, a dressing gown belt, and nothing else. An exhausted Coulson explained that she’d been refusing to speak in anything other than Mandarin or Russian for the entire time they’d been gone and had driven him, Maria and Fury nuts as none of them spoke those two languages.

Natasha, who had wanted nothing more than to give her Pauchok a hug and then go to bed instead had to scold her, remove some privileges, then deal with the ensuing tantrum and utter refusal to go to bed. An hour later she’d managed to get Daisy into pyjamas but she was still refusing to lie down and had taken to bouncing up and down in her cot shouting until Nat had suddenly found herself shouting back at her. Daisy had frozen, stunned, then dropped properly down into the cot and lain down. Natasha had stared at her for several frozen seconds, processing the force with which she’d just yelled at her daughter, and the anger there had been in her voice, and burst into tears. Daisy rolled over to look at her, her face full of the stunned shock of a child witnessing her parent cry and Nat felt guilt stab even worse through her. She smothered her tears with ruthless willpower and went over to lift her Pauchok out of the cot.

“I’m sorry sweetheart. I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”

“You scared me.” Daisy whispered, and Nat barely stopped herself from bursting into tears again.

“I’m sorry.” she choked again, her throat thick and tight.

“M’ sorry too.” Daisy admitted “For being naughty. I’ll be good now.”

“Thank you Daisy. But I shouldn’t have shouted at you like that, even if you were being very naughty.”

“Ok. I’m ready for bed now.”

“Thank you Pauchok” she said, too tired to point out to her daughter that that wasn’t her choice, and feeling exhausted to her bone knowing she was going to have to fight another collection of battles tomorrow over the restrictions for being naughty for Uncle Coulson, Aunt Maria and ‘Grandpa’.

But an hour later, even with the comforting regularity of her daughter’s breathing, and even with the familiar cool of the handcuffs around her wrist, she couldn’t sleep. All she could see when she closed her eyes was the stunned shock on Daisy’s face when she’d shouted, and her little girl’s whisper ‘You scared me’ echoed endlessly in her ears. Finally, she could take it no longer and got up, set up the child monitor and set it up to connect with the handset Clint had and went to the gym. Coulson found her there in the morning, hands cut up and bruised from punching the bag all night without wrapping her hands and blood staining the punchbag. He timed his intervention carefully and pulled her away from the bag, then silently looked at her until the whole story came tumbling out of her mouth, jumbled by lack of sleep and heavy with shame. When she was done Coulson wrapped her in a tight hug, ignoring her stiffness, and reminded her that every parent got frustrated, and every parent at some point or another loses it at their kid, that Nat wasn’t a terrible parent and Daisy wasn’t scarred for life and a collection of other things Nat only half believed. But she believed it enough to let Coulson take her back to her bunk, patch up her hands and put her to bed, telling her Clint had Daisy and threatening to officially confine her to her bunk if she didn’t get at least six hours of sleep.

Both she and Daisy were noticeably subdued for the rest of that week, Daisy having woken up alone and gone to Clint’s room to tell a sleepy Clint “Mama’s gone somewhere.” And then guiltily “I made her cry.” Clint, who knew just how much it took to make his partner cry, suddenly found himself much less sleepy than he had been, and managed to extract the story from Daisy. Then he’d sent Coulson after Nat, knowing his partner would try to provoke a fight and let him win if he went after her.

Both gradually recovered their usual spirits though, and after Daisy had regained dessert privileges the three of them found themselves sitting in one of the larger vents with a tub of ice-cream, a collection of sprinkles and sauces and a lot of giggles. They made ice cream sundaes, with sprinkles and toffee-sauce faces, and they laughed loudly enough that one of the mid-level agents heard them while walking through the corridor below and observed to another agent that voices sounded really strange when they echoed down. It was one of those moments when Natasha and Clint had the exact same _wonderful_ idea at the same time, and evil grins spread across both their faces. Daisy, who knew that grin, beamed and asked to join in.

A week later, almost every rookie and half the more experienced agents were semi-convinced the helicarrier was haunted. Fury was not pleased, and unfortunately did not think that “But it’s _Halloween_ and they were all telling ghost stories anyway!” was a good enough defence. He ordered them to calm his agents down or face the consequences. Natasha and Clint set up a collection of recordings of lullabies around the helicarrier vents, the distorted echoes of which did the exact opposite of calming the younger agents’ frazzled nerves and the result, while hilarious, did condemn strike team delta to extra cooking lessons. They both agreed it was worth it.

Life fell back into its usual routine (they took pity on the agents a few days after Halloween and set a rumour going about what they’d done and the helicarrier pretty much went back to normal), as much as life on a sometimes floating, sometimes flying top-secret special services base could be called routine. Daisy started learning to recognise letters (in more than one language) and to count (mostly cookies, but a bowl of fruitloops cereal could keep her busy for over an hour). Clint learned three more trick shots and set out to perfect his aim shooting with his non-dominant hand; he scared a few agents half to death by breaking everything known about him and wildly missing the target (and almost shooting them) and Clint and Nat got assigned to a private gym. Sci-tech came out with a new weapon, a pair of gauntlets that shot taser disks, and Nat was asked to test them.

The moment she first fired them she knew she was keeping them (metaphorically, taking sci-tech’s toys away was like taking a lolly from a child) and by the end of the session she loved them, despite the fact that the session had ended with the things malfunctioning and electrocuting her. The scientist looked a little taken aback and more than a little worried at the size of the grin as she handed them back, but he did promise to make sure Nat got the first fully working pair. Nat worked closely with the scientist and his lab to perfect the gauntlets, and despite the fact that very few other agents both favoured close quarters combat and could aim them well enough to make proper use of their advantages, Nat thought it was well worth her time. Maria when told just shrugged and commented that Clint had his special weapon, she may as well have hers. The scientist named the weapon the Widow’s Bite and Natasha found herself oddly touched. She took them on mission for the first time just days later and she and Clint cleared out the enemy base in record time, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. Natasha decided her initial impression, that the widow’s bites were going to be fun, had been an understatement.

A few weeks later Maria and Fury gave them her a week long leave in apology for the fact that they were setting up an undercover op that would take at least three weeks and wanted her to go on it. Nat’s heart inwardly fell at the thought of another long stretch away from Daisy, but took what she could get. Clint was out on mission, so she took a quinjet out to the farm herself. The following week was a blur of playparks, library visits and spending as much time as she could with her daughter as well as some time with her sort-of-sister-in-law. Two nights before she was due to head back Clint called to say he’d finally tracked down and dealt with his target, and his op was winding down and he’d managed to get leave for a weeks time. Laura immediately suggested that Daisy stay with her when she left, and Clint could bring her back to the helicarrier after his visit. Nat, faced with both Laura and Daisy’s puppy dog eyes, didn’t even think about refusing. The extra time spent in the countryside with open air and greenery would do Daisy good anyway. Helicarrier gyms may have plenty of space to run around in, and obstacle courses that made playground climbing frames very disappointing (and a zip-wire that Nat took Daisy down for fun once, and then managed to use as a reward/bribe for good behaviour for _weeks_ , which made slides a little boring) but it did not have much greenery. More importantly, it didn’t have other children, and the playground in town near the farm did, and Nat thought it important for Daisy to take advantage of any opportunity to come into contact with other kids.

The op ended up taking over a month, the cartel Nat infiltrated turning out to not only be larger but have significantly more government and security services people in its pocket that they’d first thought. Nat managed to work her way in, bypassing the usual long trust building periods through a mixture of having carefully designed her background and sheer skill. She did more than one thing to keep her cover that reminded her painfully of her past. She did the best she could to limit the damage she did while maintaining her cover, but the entered the pain she’d dealt into her ledger, even as she moved up in the cartel. She ended up the assistant to one of the bosses, and a man as vicious and paranoid as he was strange. He demanded Natasha cook his meals where he could watch her (not that it would have helped if Nat had wanted to poison him), and Nat had felt her heart sink realising her favour with the boss was about to plummet. She did the best she could, taste-tested it before giving it to him, and gagged. By some stroke of luck however, the man thought it was hilarious and had his usual lackey walk her through cooking another meal. The man turned out to be a surprisingly good teacher, but even so, Nat was stunned to find that the soup actually tasted _good_.

The op wound up with the arrest of over a hundred high level cartel members, the dismantling of the majority of the vast cartel and the removal from power of dozens of corrupt police and law officers. Natasha however considered the greatest achievement of the month to be the fact that she could now cook three different casseroles and scrambled eggs, without setting _anything_ on fire. The night after she got back she took over the senior agents kitchen to make chicken casserole and rice (which she had not gotten the hang of and had to replace with bread) for their strange family. The dish smelled satisfyingly good but Clint, Maria, Coulson and Fury all looked very dubiously at their plates, and even Daisy asked uncertainly “Is this going to poison us Mama?”

The casserole did not poison them, and was good enough that they finished the entire pot. She repeated the dish at her and Clint’s next cookery lesson and managed to make the rice semi-explode. Their teacher however almost fainted upon tasting the casserole, which Nat would have found insulting except she rather shared the sentiment. She almost felt guilty for the look on the instructors face the next lesson (when she and Clint were supposed to make pizza but she burned hers so badly it was impossible even to tell what type of pizza it was supposed to be) – it was like the look of a prisoner who had glimpsed freedom, and gone running towards it, only to find himself back in his cell. It is likely that he would have felt even worse if he’d known that the spice she’d sprinkled all over her pizza was actually not a spice but had gotten left behind by an ‘offensive cookery’ course and was very, very poisonous. However as the pizza was binned all involved went on in, well, not exactly ignorant bliss but certainly something less despairing.

Unfortunately, while the casserole did not poison Daisy, the next thing of note to happen was that she came down with chicken pox. Upon investigation they found that one of the kids Daisy had been playing with in the playground had come down with it, and they’d sent a warning around the town nursery, but no-one had thought to tell Laura. Nat rethought her view that Daisy should play with other kids whenever possible. Then she remembered the importance of peer-group interaction in the baby-books and resigned herself to this sort of thing happening occasionally. She hoped it was very occasionally. Her Pauchok was miserable, and she wasn’t much better herself. The two weeks Daisy spent recovering were one long blur of her Pauchok’s misery and trying to spend as much time with her as possible despite a string of emergencies that required Strike Team Delta.

Then, just as Daisy finally got better and things were picking up again, Clint distinguished himself by developing chicken pox himself. They had all, including Clint, assumed that, just like Maria, Coulson, and Fury, he’d had it. Unfortunately it turned out that he hadn’t actually had it, and was now having it. This had the double misfortune of putting one of shield’s best agents thoroughly out of action (no matter how much he protested he could still fire a bow) and requiring someone to make sure said agent _stayed in bed_. To make matters worse, the string of emergencies didn’t ease up and with Clint out of action Nat needed to work with someone else. She got two ‘partners’ shot before getting paired with a friend of Coulson’s from the Academy, one Melinda May who turned out to be impressively good. Not as good as Nat, obviously, but still good. They worked well together, even if they quickly fell into a unspoken rivalry that felt strangely familiar. Unfortunately, the sixth emergency since Clint had gotten ill (it had been a very bad month, even by shield standards) led to both of them being caught in an explosion and being buried inside a semi-collapsing secret base with several dozen enemy agents. They got out alive, eventually, but both of them got shot and Nat ended up stuck with Clint on bed-rest.

Maria ended up going back into the field along with another senior agent to deal with the next emergency, which was unfortunate as Fury was away dealing with a political emergency (it had been a _really_ bad month) which left Coulson on his own to try to keep his two best agents on bed rest when, now there were two of them, they were even less inclined to lie about doing nothing. By the time Maria got back Coulson had reached the end of his rope and dumped entire stacks of paperwork next to their beds and informed them that if either of them left the bunk (they had, for sanity’s sake, shoved an airbed into Clint’s bunk to keep each other company) he would sedate them. Hill came in and gave them a long lecture on how stressed Coulson was just then and how much worse they were making it and by the time she left both Nat and Clint felt about as tall as Daisy was. The lecture kept them both meekly filling out paperwork for two entire days, before Daisy unwittingly told her about Maria being especially stressed and Nat went to investigate.

It turned out that they’d had yet _another_ emergency and all their decent agents were injured or already dealing with emergencies. Nat reported back to Clint and they had one of those silent conversations where they both knew the other was thinking about it and they were carefully weighing up their boredom, their physical fitness, how much trouble they were going to get into, and whether it was worth it. They decided it was, tucked Daisy in for a nap, left the baby monitor outside Maria’s door, kitted up and stole a quinjet. Commander Hill called them halfway through the flight to order them back to the helicarrier ‘right damn now!’ and to issue several threats that Clint cut off by fiddling with the communication devices and blocking the call. They shared a look that communicated resigned understanding that Hill may just put them on administrative leave for the rest of their lives.

The did however complete the op without significant (any more than usual) issue, sorting out the emergency quickly and quietly without raising a public panic. They found a few limited-issue Captain America trading cards in the mark’s (now dead but at least he hadn’t set off a dirty bomb in the middle of a densely populated city) and shamelessly brought them back for Coulson, which diverted at least a little of his ire but did nothing to lessen Hill’s rage that they had not only ignored several direct orders to rest but had also ignored the command to return to base and gone into a dangerous situation with limited intel and absolutely no back-end support. It did not help their case that Clint was now looking very pale (and still had the spots from chicken pox, which made him look more than a little strange), and Nat had torn open her stitches and her shoulder was bleeding steadily again (the same shoulder she’d been shot through in Budapest, which was just plain irritating). Hill shouted at them for a good half hour, at which point Fury arrived and started shouting too, and Coulson, despite the cards, was giving them deeply disappointed looks.

Natasha did her best (which was very good) to look remorseful, despite not being so, but Clint wasn’t nearly as good an actor as she was (he was good, but not good enough to fool any of the three superior officers reaming them out) and if Clint wasn’t genuine it was seriously unlikely that she was and they all knew it. Eventually, they found themselves back in bed, now in separate bunks, both of them with a monitoring bracelet around their wrists (a fact they’d both been outraged enough about to bring down further fury by complaining) and the knowledge that if they left their respective bunks there would be hell to pay even if the helicarrier was on fire (which, actually, wasn’t an unusual occurrence).

Neither Clint nor Nat were _quite_ brave or insane enough to defy their superiors further, and were confined entirely to their bunks for a full week. The only reason they both stayed sane (and it was a close run thing) was that Daisy not only suddenly decided to be an absolute angel now she was better, but also spent most of that week entertaining both of them. She carried encoded notes between their bunks (without telling each other the code, to make it more interesting), held up endless story books for reading, carried Nutella between the bunks for petting, played endless board games with them by turns and generally anchored them both to sanity. When they were finally released from their bunks, with several further lectures and a list of punishments, Natasha made sure Daisy knew how proud of her for behaving so well she was, and how grateful for her company she was. She and Clint promised her a treat for behaving so well, and asked if there was anything she’d like. Daisy asked to go to the zoo, and she exchanged a look with Clint that translated to _we’ll manage it somehow_ , but warned Daisy it probably wouldn’t be any time soon.

“Is it cuz you were really naughty an’ auntie Maria an’ uncle Coulson an’ grandpa Fury are still mad?”

“Umm, well.” Nat spluttered, then sighed “Yes, yes it is Pauchok.”

“Why were you naughty?”

“Err, because, ummm” Natasha said, floundering. The truth – that the op had needed doing and they’d decided it was more important than bed rest - came with the implication that orders only needed to be obeyed if you didn’t know better, something Nat wasn’t too keen to teach her already strong willed daughter.

“That’s classified” Clint interjected and Nat sighed in relief. Daisy pouted, but she knew what classified meant and she dropped it.

It was another month before the collection of restrictions they’d been put under were lifted, and the nanny bracelets finally removed (They both could of course have taken them off by dislocating their thumbs, but while they didn’t precisely regret going on the op they did regret worrying Maria, Coulson and Fury and they did want to be out of trouble). During this time Daisy and Nutella the cat had an _incident_ with a can of industrial grade paint that turned both patchily bright blue for three weeks, Daisy mastered the English alphabet and they instituted a swear-jar (Maria at least had the grace to look ashamed when Daisy announced “D is for Damn”). Clint also managed to cook pancakes without a single thing going wrong, unlike Nat who managed to smoke them out of the kitchen (this wasn’t entirely new, but it was the first time the smoke had been green) and their instructor announced he’d had _enough_ and threatened to resign from shield altogether if he had to try to teach either of them again. Clint thought this was a little unfair given he’d just managed a perfect breakfast, but then he looked back on their past collection of lessons and had to admit that the man did have a point. Coulson wondered aloud about getting the guy who’d taught Natasha how to make casserole out of prison, but Maria shot it down and Nat and Clint celebrated the end of cooking lessons with great feeling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments make me very happy :-)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late. Due to everything going on at the moment I'm not getting as much time to write as I expected to, and I'm running out of pre-written story to post, so I decided to change to posting twice a week rather than three times, so I'm less likely to miss a post. Sorry.

Shortly after that, Natasha woke up one morning to find Daisy gone.

The level of panic that surged through her body at the discovery was something she hadn’t felt in some time. The frantic, half-terrified search that followed eventually located Daisy in the vents, painting the fan above a meeting room with thick layers of paint. Natasha, while she appreciated the idea of the prank (it was a good prank, although it needed a chemical adding in to stop the paint drying and the amount of paint on Daisy revealed the culprit rather obviously), did _not_ appreciate the heart attack her daughter had given her. The scolding and removal of that Friday’s trampolining made the seriousness of her actions clear to the two and a half year old, but Natasha still made sure to seriously explain to Daisy how scared she’d been when she’d woken up to find her gone. Daisy promised not to do it again, but the incident still shook Nat badly. She hadn’t realised she’d stopped waking up whenever Daisy moved in her sleep, or got up to use the bathroom, or _left the bunk_. It was a frightening realisation that Daisy had been wandering around the helicarrier alone and she hadn’t even known.

Maria, who had been woken up at 4am by a frantic Nat (Clint had woken Coulson), commissioned a child sized monitoring bracelet for Daisy disguised as a bracelet, and Nat, despite hating the idea of monitoring her daughter, managed to convince her Pauchok to promise to always wear it. She didn’t monitor the information from it, but it was comforting to know she could always find her daughter.

Then she showed Daisy how to mix a chemical into the paint can to make the paint slower to dry, and how to paint it on fans without getting the stuff on her. They painted the fans of four different conference rooms and lay on their stomachs peering through another air vent watching the first meeting. Daisy was shaping up to be a great prankster, and managed to muffle her laughter enough not to be heard as the paint flew everywhere, but the glee on her face made Nat smile so wide her face hurt and some part of her marvelled that she could have made someone so wonderful.

Coulson took over cooking lessons and forced Clint and Nat to attend; Nat managed to cook a soup that at least looked ok but on tasting proved to be so salty even Nat wouldn’t eat it; Clint almost recreated his perfect pancakes but upon tasting one Coulson gagged and asked what the use-by-date on the milk he’d used was. Clint and Nat asked in perfect tandem what a ‘use-by-date’ was and Coulson gave them such a horrified and incredulous look neither could help laughing and Coulson wondered aloud again how they’d survived this long.

One of the helicarrier rookies managed to slip into Nat and Clint’s private gym and rig the whole thing with (surprisingly well hidden) water balloons, and a full out prank war exploded between the braver rookies on one side and Strike Team Delta plus Daisy on the other. Both sides recruited scientists through various means (favours, bribery, pleading....) and for two weeks pranks ruled. Nat, Clint and Daisy may have been thoroughly outnumbered, but Nat and Clint were Strike Team Delta, Daisy could manage things no adult could (not least recruiting an _impressive_ amount of scientists through remorseless use of baby eyes), and all of them were extremely imaginative.

Fury and Maria spent a couple of days handing out reprimands like candy before giving up and resigning themselves to the chaos. Another day later they were posting scores for pranks (with marks on things like creativity, stealth, smoothness of execution...) and announced the end date of the competition and a prize for the winner. Neither side was under any illusion that this wasn’t just to ensure the prank war _had_ an end date, but the competition never-the-less raised the stakes. The prank war lasted two weeks (broken up by missions) and in the end the rookies won ‘Most Creative Prank’ for managing to turn the swimming pool into an almost-cement-like substance (with both Nat and Clint in it); Nat, Clint, and Daisy won ‘Best Executed Prank’ for managing to hide electromagnets around the rookie’s bunks and dining hall and attach accompanying magnets to belts, boots and uniforms, but claimed they could not have ‘Most Stealthy Prank’ for it because they’d then taken advantage of the rookie’s immobile status to run through the halls swiping paintbrushes across faces. No overall winner of the prank war was announced and a general feeling of mutual pranking respect was shared between the pranking rookies and Strike Team Delta. When all was said and done: 27 new gadgets/chemicals/thingys were developed by sci-tech, 5 rookies were promoted immediately and the other 7 were eyed up as having serious potential, and Maria started making Clint and Nat take occasional sessions training the rookies in advanced firearms use and hand-to-hand combat. Both halves of Strike Team Delta did their level best to squirm out of this, reminding Maria and Phil what had happened the _last_ time Nat had been sent to train the rookies and about the entire mafia disaster. Maria however merely returned that they were only getting those rookies brave enough to prank them, they would be supervised and they weren’t being given a choice.

Natasha Romanoff’s incomplete list of things that came up during Daisy’s 2s the parenting books did not warn her of, prepare her for, or even _suggest_ how to deal with:

  * The varied difficulties involved in putting an unwilling child to bed. This was one of the things the parenting books did talk about. However, there was no section on ‘helping and convincing an unwilling child to climb into their cot because you have a bullet wound in one shoulder and can’t just pick them up’. Nor did the suggestions for normal occasions always work. One parenting book advised learning from other parents. Natasha didn’t know any of those, but she tried her family anyway. Fury and Coulson admitted they didn’t remember how they were convinced or threatened into bed. It didn’t seem a good idea to ask Maria, and Clint just said he slept when he got tired. Another parenting book suggested she ‘look back on fond memories of your own childhood’ for inspiration. Natasha and Clint used it for target practice and she had to admit she felt a little better afterwards.




  * What to do when your child refuses to speak in a language their babysitter understands. She did, after significant searching, find a book for multi-lingual children, but it focussed on helping that child to learn to speak, read and write in more than one language. It did _not_ tell her what to do with the fact that her daughter spoke English, Russian, Mandarin, Spanish, and American Sign Language fluently, and several other languages passably (including a Slavic dialect no-one on the helicarrier but Daisy and Natasha understood), and would spend gleeful afternoons driving Clint, Phil, Maria and Fury nuts by refusing to speak in any language they understood.




  * How to explain to your daughter why you can’t call the highly respected head of a spy agency ‘Grandpa Fury’ in front of his agents.




  * How to explain that while Uncle Clint may have found it funny to teach her their call signs, and while it wasn’t really a problem to call her ‘Black Widow’, Clint ‘Hawkeye’, or Maria ‘Commander’, she should _not_ call Director Fury ‘Pirate’ in front of a group of new recruits.




  * How to explain that hiding around corners and shouting ‘Boo’ at people may be very funny in cartoons but is _not a good idea_ on a base full of _very dangerous_ agents with _**very dangerous reflexes**_.




  * What to do when your child decides to throw a very loud, very impassioned tantrum in the air-vents above the senior agents gym.




  * What to do when your child wants to play with _your_ toys – like the knives, guns and widow bites kept securely locked away. What to do when she goes on to present problematic arguments like “You said sharing is caring!”




  * The fact that “Walk!” when said by her Aunt Maria, Uncle Coulson or Grandpa Fury (the name stuck and Fury had given up on shaking it) is far less likely to mean ‘stop running indoors’ and far more likely to mean ‘use the corridors not the vents’.




  * The sheer amount of trouble a child that climbs as well as she walks and runs can get into.




  * Why she really, really should have realised what a bad idea playing ‘hide-and-go-seek’ (picked up on the farm with Laura) was on the helicarrier, with so many places to hide it didn’t even bear thinking about and choices of corridors, stairs, or vents all over the ship to run off to. That particular game was played once and once only on the helicarrier and resulted in a ‘surprise training exercise’ for the rookies in ‘locating and herding’ possible threats. It was generally agreed to never speak of it again and no-one ever told the rookies that the exercise had not actually been preplanned.




  * The fact that mama and uncle Clint had been being ‘naughty’ when they listened in to Grandpa Fury’s meeting and she must _never ever_ _tell anyone_ the things she’d heard from the vents.

  * How to explain the entire concept of sensitive information and ‘classified’.

  * Why she must never mention Aunt Laura and the farm to anyone not already an ‘aunt, uncle or grandpa’.




  * The _vast_ possibilities available in a game of dress-up when your mama is an expert spy and the Shield disguises store-room can be raided. And the number of heart attacks (initially) unsuspecting superiors can be given if Natasha or Clint so desires....




  * What to do when Daisy asks to play ‘doctors and nurses’ and then proceeds to pull out a _real first aid kit_ and act out a worryingly accurate demonstration of how to clean, stitch and bandage a wound. Natasha reflected after this particular incident that maybe she and Clint stitched each other up a little too often.




  * The sheer size that a ‘make your own volcano’ (Phil and surprisingly Fury both insisted it was a childhood milestone) project can take on when shield lab agents get involved.... In hindsight, it probably started to go too far when the young scientists started experimenting with different formulas to get the ‘spread of foam right’ for ‘different types of lava’. The final product consisted of a painted paper-mache construction almost as tall as Daisy was. On activation it started fizzing and rumbling until the top blew out, and different waves of fast and slow coloured ‘lava’ came pouring out that gave off actual heat. Daisy was utterly delighted with the project. Natasha and Clint mutually agreed not to talk about that fact that a week later the ‘lava’ formula had been tweaked and they were given a few syringes of the stuff to burn through wiring without noticeably damaging the wall on a mission.




Daisy turned 3 years old and asked for a ‘proper bed like a grown-up’ for her birthday, and Nat admitted to herself that she probably should have gotten Daisy a proper bed a year ago. She and Clint call in some favours from sci-tech (favours from sci-tech are remarkably easy to gather when you are nuts enough to be willing to test pretty much whatever they come up with) and go all out. The bed ends up a four-poster with a canopy and curtains (complete with glowing constellations), a built in lamp, water cup holder, bookshelf, whiteboard, cuddly-toy mini-bed (for the toys she didn’t sleep with), stereo to play audio books or soothing sleep sounds, and cat basket. Daisy was utterly enraptured and by the time two weeks had passed could name every constellation on all four curtains and the canopy (because of course sci-tech had made them accurate), even though she was disappointed that Nutella refused to sleep in the cat-basket.

Even better, three weeks after her birthday, Nat and Clint _finally_ got permission to take Daisy to the zoo (Phil, Maria and Fury were a little worried about what Strike Team Delta might do out in the ‘normal’ world and Clint didn’t have the _best_ track record with not breaking his cover not to mention the liability a child was to the necessary cover-stories) provided Phil went with them. After two weeks of ‘mini-agent training’ in a cover story, different names (Nat stayed ‘mama’ but Clint because ‘uncle James’ and Coulson ‘uncle Rick’), answers to questions like where she grew up (not on a helicarrier), speaking in only English in public, and doing _exactly_ what she was told, they were ready. Nat, Clint, Phil and Daisy all dyed their hair and used several other tricks to subtly changed their faces, and then they headed out to the best zoo Nat had been able to find online (chosen for safety ratings and accessible escape routes as well as animals and ‘usual’ things).

\------------

The zoo was the _best thing ever_. Even the chickens and pigs and goat at Auntie Laura’s farm weren’t as good as the zoo! There were bears, and giraffes and two elephants and a hippo and lot of cats with funny names and...

“Don’t run ahead Katie!” Mama called, and she reluctantly slowed down, bouncing with impatience.

“Can we see the monkeys’ next? Can we? Can we?”

“We can go where ever you like next if you hold my hand.” Mama said, and Daisy grabbed onto Mama’s hand, tugging her forwards.

“Mama? Why do elephants have really long noses?”

“Ummm, why don’t you ask your Uncle James?”

Daisy turned to uncle ‘James’ eagerly. Uncle James wasn’t really called James, he was usually Clint, and Daisy wasn’t really called Katie of course. It was just a game. One of those weird games-that-aren’t-really-games like practising running to the nearest deck when the fire alarm went off, or practising climbing through the vents to hide in the secret room she was never to tell anyone about. Auntie Maria said if the alarms ever went off when they weren’t expected they wouldn’t be games and she had to run really fast to safety.

“Uncle James? Why do elephants have long noses?” Daisy was really good at remembering what to call people now, she’d been practising for two whole weeks! Grandpa said she was a little agent in training, like the grown-ups! But Mama had looked mad when he said that.

“Well, hundreds of years ago, elephants used to tell lots of lies, and every time they told a lie their noses grew, until they told so many lies their noses stayed that way, and now all elephants have long noses.”

Daisy wrinkled her nose, not quite sure whether he was teasing or not. She studied uncle James/Clint carefully, until a tell-tale quirk of his lip told the truth. “Meanie! You’re teasing! Mama! He’s teasing me!”

“Well why do you think elephants have really long noses sweetie?” Mama asked. Her voice sounded a bit different to how it usually did, like she was pretending to be someone else, but Daisy didn’t mind. Mama was really good at make-believe. Sometimes, for work, Mama could do it for _weeks_. But sometimes she came back from jobs like that hurt, and Daisy didn’t like that, even though Mama and Uncle Clint didn’t seem to feel it much.

“Because they’re elephants, and elephants have long noses.” Daisy decided.

“There’s your answer then” Mama said.

“But that’s not reallllly an answer Mama!”

“Maybe Uncle Rick knows?”

“Oh look! We’re nearly at the monkey enclosure!” Uncle Rick said. “Want to sit on my shoulders and see if you can spot a monkey?”

“Yes!”

“Yes what?”

“Please!”

“Ok, up you go”

Mama frowned a little “Rick, lifting her up makes her more visible, and easier to you-know.”

“It’ll be fine, we’ve been careful.” Uncle Phil, said, but Mama frowned until Uncle Clint, no – Uncle Rick and Uncle James, grabbed her hand and squeezed. Mama was weird sometimes.

Daisy could see over the crowds’ heads from Uncle Rick’s shoulders. There were lots and lots of people at the zoo, and they all wore TV-clothes. Daisy had never seen so many people in real life wearing TV-clothes before, but Uncle Rick said those were normal clothes, and people on the helicarrier wore special clothes. But they weren’t allowed to talk about the helicarrier here. If she was asked, Daisy was called Katie, and she’d grown up on a farm like Auntie Laura’s, only in another state.

“I can see a monkey!!! ‘s hanging upside down! Mama, why’s it hanging upside down?”

“Maybe it likes it?”

“That’s silly!” Daisy giggled.

Uncle Rick let her ride on his shoulders all the way around the monkey enclosures. The enclosures were really big, but Uncle Rick said that the monkeys still didn’t really have enough room, not like they would have if they lived in the wild.

“Do monkeys like the wild?”

“We think they do.”

“What else do monkeys like Uncle Rick?”

“They like climbing, and swinging off things, and eating bananas, and sometimes they like being naughty.”

Daisy stopped to think about this “Like Mama and Uncle James?” she whispered and Uncle Rick burst out laughing and Daisy giggled when Mama and Uncle James looked over at them.

They bought hot dogs for lunch from a stall and sat on the grass next to a big play-ground to eat. Daisy had had hot dogs before, but Mama wouldn’t let her have them much. She said they were unhealthy. Mama and Auntie Maria and Grandpa said a lot of yummy things were unhealthy, but Daisy knew that if she smiled just so, she could sometimes get Uncle Rick to give them to her anyway if Mama was away for a bit. Mama was right here now, but Daisy tried anyway.

“Uncle Rick? Can we get some of those big pink balls they’re selling over there?”

“It’s called Candyfloss Katie. Julia, what do you think?” Julia was Mama’s make-believe name, but Daisy just called her Mama so she didn’t need to remember it.

“What’s candyfloss?”

Uncle James turned to looked at Mama with his jaw hanging open and a shocked look on his face, and Daisy giggled. He looked silly.

“You’ve never had candyfloss?”

Mama made a face at Uncle James, and did that thing adults did sometimes where they spoke without really speaking, and then Uncle James jumped up and held a hand out for Katie. “We’re going to have to fix this _right now_! Come on Katie, lets go get some!”

“Really?” Daisy said, jumping up. Normally, Uncle James wouldn’t give her something unless Mama said he could or it was something she usually ate. Uncle James said it was because Mama would prank him if he did. Daisy was pretty sure this was true.

Candyfloss turned out to be really sweet, and Uncle James got her a whole ball to herself and it was yummy. Mama looked like she wanted to complain when they got back but she ate all of hers and some of Uncle James’s too so she didn’t say anything. Afterwards though, she took Daisy to the playground to “Run off some energy”

There were lots and lots and lots of other kids in the playground. Daisy had only ever seen that many kids in one place on TV! Sometimes she played with other kids in town near Auntie Laura’s, but there would only be five or six of them in the playground at once. Daisy could count up to 25 now, but there were more than 25 kids here.

“Do you know the rules Katie?”

“Don’t leave the playground, don’t go with someone that’s not family, come when you call me and if someone grabs me kick ‘em real hard between the legs and scream really loud.” Daisy recited impatiently.

“Scream first but alright, off you go!” Mama said, and Daisy ran off. No-one would grab her anyway, not with Mama watching. Not unless they were really stupid. Mama could be really scary when she wanted to be.

Daisy went for the climbing frame first. It was a really big climbing frame – bigger than the one at the playground near Auntie Laura’s, but not as big as the ones in the gyms on the helicarrier. But Daisy was allowed on the playground climbing frames alone, and she wasn’t in the gym. There was another boy starting up when she grabbed the first bar.

“What’s your name?” He asked

“D-Katie” Daisy said, remembering just in time not to say Daisy. “What’s yours?”

“I’m Brandon. I’m going to climb all the way to the top. I’m a really good climber.”

“So am I! Mama says so!”

“I’m a better climber!”

“Are not!”

“Am too!”

“Are not!”

“Am too!

“Are not!”

“Am too! I’ll show you, I’ll get to the top first!” he said, and started climbing.

“No fair! You got a head-start!” Daisy complained, and scrambled after him.

She still made it to the top first, she was good at playground climbing frames, they were lots easier than the ones on the helicarrier. Playground ones were designed to be easy, gym ones were designed to be hard, and for grown-ups.

Brandon wasn’t much slower than she was though, and he got to the top soon after her, scowling.

“Told you you weren’t better!” Daisy said.

“Fine, you’re a good climber. For a girl.”

Daisy had heard that comment on TV before. Mama said it was stupid. “That’s stupid. Girls are just as good at things as boys are. Mama says so!”

Brandon shrugged “I thought girls didn’t like climbing. Just pink things.”

Daisy wrinkled her nose “I don’t like pink.”

“My neighbour’s a girl, and she likes pink.”

“Well, my Mama’s a girl and she likes climbing, and she only wears pink when she’s playing make-believe! So there!” Daisy had heard someone saying that on TV and liked how it sounded. She stuck her tongue out at Brandon for good measure.

Brandon just shrugged again “Want to go play on the roundabout?”

“Ok”

They climbed down quickly, and Daisy jumped the last bit, rolling when she landed like Mama had taught her to do if she fell.

“Didn’t that hurt?” Brandon asked when he’d joined her.

“No. I rolled.”

Brandon looked at her for a moment “You’re weird.”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“Am not! You are!”

“Am not!”

“Are too!” Daisy said, giggling now, and after a moment Brandon joined her.

They went to play on the roundabout with the other kids until they were both dizzy and Daisy fell over when Mama called her and she tried to run over. Mama saw though and came over to pick her up and check she was alright, but it was only bumps.

“Mama? Am I weird?” Daisy asked as they walked out of the playground. The slight pause before Mama answered told Daisy she’d surprised her.

“No Pauchok, you’re not weird, you’re special.”

“Why am I special Mama?”

“Because you’re my daughter and I think you’re special.”

“Ok! Can we go see the penguins?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of different structure to this one, so I hope it wasn't weird. I'm not sure how well I wrote from Daisy's perspective (really not written much from kids perspectives) but I think it at least makes sense. 
> 
> Comments make me very happy!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I've been gone for so long. I had a bit of a mental health crash. I'm doing a decent bit better now, but I can't promise regular updates. Sorry. I did want to post something though to say this isn't abandoned and will be updated sporadically.

Three weeks later Nat woke in the night to Clint sliding into bed beside her, shaking slightly. This wasn’t unusual, hadn’t been since Budapest, but as far as Natasha knew, Clint hadn’t been on the helicarrier when she went to bed. 

“What happened to your week with Laura?” she asked sleepily, but when she didn’t get a response she dragged her eyes open and instantly felt herself snap fully awake, realising a moment later just how tense Clint was. Clint said nothing, face stormy but eyes haunted, and Nat hastily uncuffed herself (she was doing better, but, well, some nights were harder than others.) and dragged Clint out of bed and across the hall into his bunk where they wouldn’t risk waking Daisy.

“What _happened_?” she demanded, fear twisting in her stomach because if Clint had been at the farm and something happened then chances were that something had happened to Laura and Daisy would be so upset if something happened to Laura and Nat would be upset if something had happened to Laura and when had Nat started caring so much she’d feel like this at even the thought that...

“I hit Laura.” Clint said, and it was so completely not what Nat had expected him to say that it cut right through her internal panic. 

“What?”

“I hit her. Laura. I hit her.” Clint said, the words falling from his mouth in brittle horror, his face like a thunderstorm. But now, now in the light of Clint’s bunk, Natasha could see what lay underneath the anger. Could see the self-loathing written all over Clint’s body language, hear it coating his voice in roughness. Shit. 

“It’s ok.” Nat said, even though it wasn’t, not really “We’ll fix this. Whatever happened, whatever fight you two had, we’ll fix this.” They had to fix it. They had to fix it because Clint looked so utterly broken and Nat hadn’t ever wanted to see that look on Clint’s face. 

“We didn’t fight.” Clint said, the tremor in his voice becoming more pronounced. 

Natasha was clearly missing something here. 

“Ok, you didn’t fight.” she agreed “Want to talk about what did happen?” she offered, even though she wasn’t really sure she wanted to hear what had happened. What had put that look on Clint’s face. The look that made her want to run and hide, because that look _did not_ belong on Clint’s face. She wanted to suit up and hunt down whoever had hurt him, whoever had put that look on Clint’s face, that look like the whole world was ending. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t because it sounded like _Laura_ had put that look on Clint’s face and Laura wouldn’t hurt anyone (well, unless they deserved it) so something had to be very, very wrong. 

“I hit her” Clint repeated. “That’s what happened. I hit her.” he sounded like a broken record, half shocked, half horrified and completely broken. 

“Ok, and what happened before you hit her?” Nat coaxed, her voice soothing as she led Clint towards the bed, deciding he should probably sit down.

“She, she woke me up. And I hit her.” Clint turned to her, eyes glassy “Nat, she was trying to help, and I hit her!”

Natasha started to have a creeping feeling she knew what had happened “Clint, were you having a nightmare? Before she woke you up?”

Clint’s jerky nod told Nat all she needed to know to have a pretty good idea of what had happened. 

“Oh Clint, it’s going to be ok.” she said, suddenly realising she was utterly out of her depth. 

It wasn’t that Clint had never cried in front of her before, or that they’d never dealt with Clint’s nightmares as well as hers, he had and they had. But this was new territory. There was a world of difference between sharing grim sympathy about the past events that haunted them and dealing with a disaster that was unfolding _right now_ and hurting her partner _right now_. 

“It’s not going to be ok! I hit her Nat! I punched her in the face and she fell off the bed and she looked so stunned and _I hit her!_ ”

“Clint,” Nat said, voice still soothing “Laura knows you have demons. She knows you didn’t mean to punch her. She knows it wasn’t her you thought you were punching.”

“I hit her Nat! You don’t understand. I hit her!”

The frantic edge to Clint’s voice and the way his muscles were somehow tightening even further told Nat they were about to get to the crux of the matter.

“What don’t I understand?”

“I hit her.” Clint said, but this time his voice wasn’t rough it was a whisper, low and defeated “I knocked her around just like my dad used to knock my mom around.”

Oh. _Oh_. OH. Shit. 

“ _ **No!**_ No Clint, No! You panicked Clint, you had a nightmare, there was someone near you and you panicked. That is not the same thing as knocking someone around.”

Nat didn’t know a whole lot about healthy romantic relationships (she didn’t know a whole lot about healthy relationships at all), but she knew intimately the language of violence and she knew the difference between punching someone because it was the job, punching someone because you wanted them to hurt, and punching someone because they snuck up on you and tapped you on the shoulder. Clint had carried a bruise on his jaw for days from doing that. Natasha had gained a black eye from forgetting to make any noise when she approached Clint from behind one op. There was a difference. 

But this wasn’t her Clint had punched, it was Laura, and that was different. Clint’s dad hadn’t smacked his friends around just because he could, he’d smacked his wife around. This wasn’t Clint’s fault, not really, Nat knew that, but she could see why Clint didn’t. 

“I hit her Nat, hit her hard enough to knock her off the bed, how’s that _not_ knocking her around?” Clint voice was rough with anger, but Nat knew it wasn’t directed at her. 

“You didn’t mean to birdbrain!” Nat said, her words exasperated but her tone still gentle. “I know that, you know that, Laura knows that. I’m surprised she’s even mad at you.”

Something flickered over Clint’s face, so fast that if Nat hadn’t known him so well even she might have missed it. _Oh no._

“Is Laura even mad?”

“Of course she’s mad! I hit her!”

“But you didn’t stick around to find out did you?”

Clint didn’t answer, which was as good as a confirmation. She shuffled closer to her partner, leaning her shoulder against his.

“Birdbrain” she said without heat. _It’s ok_.

“I hurt her Nat.” _It’s not going to be ok._

“Laura’s tough.” _We’re gonna fix it_.

“She’s never forgive me. She _shouldn’t_ forgive me.”

“You haven’t spoken to her since it happened, how do you know she won’t?”

Clint didn’t answer, but Nat was done with Clint being an idiot. This wasn’t helping, she was gonna fix this.

She hopped up from the bed and pulled open a drawer, finding several burner phones exactly where she expected to find them, stacked next to another collection of standard mission gear. She still hadn’t gotten around to getting a phone for personal use, but Nat had memorised Laura’s number before she’d left Daisy at the farm (and given her a burner just in case). 

Clint, even drowning in self-loathing and despair, wasn’t an idiot, and he realised what Nat was doing about a second before she hit call, and lunged across the bunk towards her. Nat dodged, gave her unbalanced partner a quick shove, and caught the back of his shirt before he could faceplant. The phone answered on the second ring. 

“Laura Barton speaking.” she sounded stressed. Nat couldn’t really blame her. 

“It’s Nat” She said.

“Nat! Thank goodness! Is Clint there? Is he ok? I can’t believe he got in a quinjet like that!”

Nat opened her mouth to tell Laura that it was fine, they’d both flown in much worse states, then realised that probably wasn’t reassuring. “He’s here, he’s safe. And he’s _going to stop being an idiot and talk to you_.” 

Clint gave her a glare that ought to have burned through solid steel but couldn’t quite hide the panic in his eyes. Nat blithely ignored this and handed him the phone. 

_Want me to stay?_ She signed

Clints hand was shaking when he took the phone, but he shook his head. 

_OK, I’m outside if you need me._ She signed, trying to communicate as much reassurance as she could into the movements before she left to give him and Laura some privacy. 

\--------

When he came out half an hour later he’d clearly been crying again, but he looked a lot lighter. He sat down next to Nat in the corridor. 

_Is she mad?_

_She called me an idiot._

_You are an idiot._

_Hey!_

Nat gave a _what?_ shrug and nudged him to continue. 

_She said not to run off next time._

Nat hummed, not really knowing how to reply to that. Chances were high that he would run off again. It was who he was. Who she too. Neither of them were good at sticking around and working it out.

They didn’t speak for a while, just sat there, Nat leaning her head on Clint’s shoulder and Clint his head on hers. 

_Thank you_ Clint signed finally, and Nat didn’t need to ask what it was for. 

\-------------

Life went on. Strike Team Delta went on five missions back to back, then fell asleep in a tangled heap in Nat’s bunk (which happened to be ever so slightly closer) without showering or even changing, and slept for five hours until Coulson came to find out why their comms were still online but going unanswered and shook them awake, shoving them grumbling towards showers and food before he let them go back to bed again. Both slept the clock round and woke up (separately) to Daisy, tongue stuck out in concentration, carrying a tray of pancakes and syrup. 

Coulson tried to teach them how to make pizza with mixed results but no explosions, which they counted as a win. Daisy learned to do a handstand and spent half the following week upside down with a big grin on her face. Sci-tech made Clint the exploding arrows he’d been begging for for months and Coulson threatened to confiscate them forever if even one was fired in the helicarrier. Nat started teaching Daisy to read seriously, in both English and Russian and they started bringing books back from any mission that went near a bookshop until Daisy had a little mini-library in the bunk that was getting really quite crowded. Nutella disgraced herself by somehow getting into one of the labs, killing three mice and proudly bringing them back for Daisy to see. Daisy, rather unsurprisingly, burst into tears and Nutella had to be kept out of sight for a few days until she’d mostly forgotten about it. 

Both Clint and Nat get an undercover assignment that’s supposed to last a fortnight but goes up in flames (literally) only a week in. They still get a few of their targets but Clint breaks his arm again and Nat breathes in enough smoke to land herself in medical too and they both get shouted at for taking stupid risks. Nat is back in the field in a few days, healing quickly as always, but Clint’s arm broke messily and the doctors say he won’t be ready to go back into the field for a month. He drove everyone on the helicarrier nuts for most of a fortnight until Nat flies him to the farm for Laura to handle for a while. A week later she gets a call from Laura and realises she overestimated her sister-in-law’s ability to control her partner (or underestimated Clint’s boredom). The only slight silver lining is how amusing Maria’s face was when Nat tells her that Clint broke his arm again because he fell off the roof after trying to fire his bow with his teeth. 

With Clint out of action for even longer (which Coulson said served him right but was a pain for them) Nat found herself paired with Agent May again. They made a decent team, even if she’d never be as good a partner as Clint was. Between them they got the job done however, even when it all went wrong, and May proved surprisingly willing to follow insane plans, so they got on well enough. By the time Clint came back with Daisy (having had Daisy at the farm for his last week of medical leave) Nat and May could have been called friends except they spent so much time competing that rivals was a better term. 

Clint used three exploding arrows in one shot his first mission back and the resulting blast not only took out the helicopter shooting at them but also a chunk of the nearest building. They made it back from the mission sooty and grinning and Coulson groaned that he’d known the exploding arrows were a bad idea. Daisy learned to read simple sentences and proudly wore the ‘Best Junior Reader’ sticker Nat gave her for a week. Maria told both Nat and Clint that she didn’t care which of them was leaving toy spiders in her desk but it had better stop, which was unusual only because neither of them had actually left any spiders in her desk. Daisy learned to walk on her hands and spent so much time doing it that Fury joked she’d start growing downwards and she stopped doing it out of sudden fear that she’d shrink. Maria started threatening Nat and Clint with paperwork if they didn’t stop it with the spiders and refused to believe that it wasn’t actually them. Coulson and Fury started finding the occasional plastic spider on their desk and in their desk drawers too and both blamed the indignant Nat and Clint, pointing out that none of the junior agents were regularly in their offices and wouldn’t dare pick the locks on their desk drawers anyway. Clint point blank asked the junior agents that had taken part in the prank war whether it was one of them and got told “No way, we’re not insane enough to prank Hardass Hill”, which was unfortunate for both Clint and the junior agent as Maria happened to be passing at the time. 

Two days later they mystery sorted itself out when Nat, out of the corner of her eye, saw Daisy slip a black shape out of her pocket and put it on Coulson’s desk. Stunned, she whirled round to find that _yes_ it was a plastic spider and _yes_ it had been Daisy all along. Her spluttering noise drew both Coulson and Clint’s attention from their own paperwork (Coulson had taken to making them fill out mission reports in front of him so they actually got done on time) and all she could do was point at the (now familiar) plastic spider on the desk. Daisy froze like a deer in headlights, guilt written all over her face. 

Coulson looked between Daisy and his agents and slowly shook his head “No way, one of you must have helped her. Daisy couldn’t have picked the locks.”

It was a twitch, just a twitch of Clint’s face, but it was enough. Natasha turned slowly, menacingly, towards her best friend.

“You didn’t.” She said “Tell me you didn’t.”

Clint glanced towards the door, then towards the vent, eyeing up the distance to his escape routes, and it was all the confirmation Nat needed. “ _You taught her to pick locks!?!?!?”_

Clint bolted and Nat lunged after him, but Coulson grabbed her arm and slowed her down just enough for Clint to escape, and reminded her that she shouldn’t actually kill him. For some reason, Nat’s response that she only intended to maim him a little did not reassure him enough to let her go, and Nat wasn’t quite angry enough to fight Coulson over it. Instead, she gave Daisy a long lecture about picking locks and going into other peoples things that made her feel like a complete hypocrite. By the time she was finished Daisy was looking more genuinely guilty (as opposed to merely guilty because she was caught, not that Natasha knew anything about that kind of guilt) and Maria was calling her through her comm to ask why Clint had just come into her office begging to be put on a mission right now. 

“Did you give him one?”

“Stuck him on a supply run since he was offering”

“ _Damn it_!”

“Swear jar. What did Clint do?”

“You know those spiders?”

“Oh, it was him then?”

“No. It was Daisy.”

“ _What_?”

“Because Clint taught her to pick locks.”

There was a pause, then “He gets back in fifteen hours. Please don’t put him in medical.”

“No promises” Nat said, her voice sweet and innocent.

She didn’t put him in medical. She did however donate his entire collection of coffee, chocolate and sweets to the junior agents and spend a significant portion of the next 15 hours making sure the entire helicarrier knew who they would have to deal with if they gave Hawkeye anything sweet or caffeinated for the next month. 

Clint went into caffeine withdrawal within a day. Nat made sure to smirk at him when she drank her own coffee; it was the kind of smirk that said _just be glad you still have all your limbs._ Clint had just enough remaining self preservation to keep his mouth shut. 

Daisy, despite losing dessert privileges for a week, thought the prank was hilarious, and Nat, once she’d gotten over the fact that Clint had taught her _three year old_ daughter to _pick locks_ , grudgingly admitted it was pretty funny. 

She still made sure to casually drop the incident into conversation the next time they were at the farm and immensely enjoyed watching Laura lecture a cowering Clint on irresponsible adulting. 

Their quinjet gets shot down on the way back from their next mission, sending Clint, Nat and the jet spiralling towards the ocean far below. Natasha is flung right out of the hole in the plane, but Clint manages to snatch a parachute before he too is ripped away by air pressure. Natasha flung her arms out, some instinct making her increase her air resistance and slow her fall, and Clint managed to catch up with the parachute. They pull it mere seconds before they hit the water and the impact is almost enough to knock them both out. As it is, they swim and float and struggle to keep their heads above water for hours before shield manages to rescue them. The second quinjet is flying dangerously low, and the pilot is clearly frightened, crisis training or not, but he manages to get them both out of the water. They are exhausted, half drowned, and sick from swallowing too much salt water. Natasha has a concussion, and broken ribs, and Clint is pale with blood loss from a wound he’d barely noticed when falling out of the plane. Fury ignored both their protests and sent them to medical, telling them they were a pain in the ass but he’d rather they were a living pain in the ass. 

Maria sends Daisy to medical the next morning with a pile of board games, a stack of books, and a note that said in Spanish (which Daisy was not learning to read yet) _Go ahead, set an example for your daughter that she should refuse medical aid, I’m sure you won’t regret it._ As tactics to keep them in medical went, this one was irritatingly effective. Point to Maria. She made a mini paper aeroplane out of the note and sent it across the room to Clint’s hospital bed. Daisy watched it go with wide eyes and begged to be shown how to make one herself. They sent Daisy to get some paper (through the vents, Nat didn’t want Daisy walking around medical without protection, theoretically safe or not) and set about teaching her. Three hours later they had fifteen different models of paper aeroplanes, and one of the doctors had given them a book of origami (more to keep the infamous pair entertained and distracted, and by extension the medical bay intact, than to be nice but it was appreciated nonetheless) and they had started expanding their repertoire. By the time they were released from medical (a day and a half later), they could make 17 different birds, 12 different flowers, 19 assorted houses and boats, and no less than 26 zoo animals. They hid the lot around the helicarrier and offered a prize for whichever agent could find and photograph the lot. They made sure half of them were out of bounds. Maria was not happy. Point to strike team delta. 

Once they were both declared healthy (well, healthy enough anyway), Nat decided it was time Daisy learned to swim properly. She and Clint spent the following month and a half taking Daisy to one of the smaller pools for at least three hours a day whenever they weren’t on missions. While even Nat admitted that the ‘lessons’ could often more accurately be called ‘water fights’, Daisy did come out of it a strong swimmer. This was partly due to the fact that both halves of strike team delta kept encouraging her to swim further and longer, and partly due to the fact that the lessons were genuinely fun. Neither Nat nor Clint openly admitted that the fact that they also taught Daisy to swim fully clothed (a process which involved jumping in fully clothed and losing as much clothing as possible as quickly as possible while staying afloat) was because they’d both had nightmares of Daisy being thrown into the ocean with them. Nat did however promise that if Daisy could swim 300 metres before her fourth birthday, that they could go to a water park for it. Daisy managed it a month before. 

Three months before her birthday however, Daisy asked the question Natasha had been dreading for over a year. 

There was no warning to the question, no sign that where it had been unthought of before it was about to be asked. It had been a normal day (well, nothing particularly notable had happened, few days on the helicarrier could really be called normal), and a normal bedtime. Daisy had gotten changed without complaint, brushed her teeth, picked a story and curled into Nat’s side on the bed as she read. It wasn’t until Nat had finished reading ‘The Tiger who Came to Tea’ (a current favourite) and was about to tuck Daisy in when she asked “Mama? Why don’t I have a Daddy like the kids on TV?”

For a moment, Natasha was so thrown that all that came out of her mouth was “Ummm”

“Is uncle Clint my Daddy?”

Nat suddenly realised that Daisy could still shock her and chocked on air. “No” she said finally, once she’d started breathing normally again “Clint isn’t your Daddy.”

“Do I have a Daddy?”

Nat was briefly, deeply tempted to tell Daisy this wasn’t a conversation for just before bed, and hope her daughter had forgotten about it by morning. Unfortunately, she suspected that would not only not work but be a little unfair to her daughter, so she reminded herself that she was the black widow and she could handle anything (It didn’t work like that, Nat both knew and ignored that).

“Yes Pauchok, you have a Daddy, but he lives a long way away.”

“Why does he live so far away?”

“Because that’s where he lives” Nat said, unable to think of anything better.

“Can I meet him?”

“Uhm, I’ll think about it sweetheart.” Natasha said, still reeling a little and unwilling to answer either yes or no.

“Ok” Daisy accepted, and let herself be hugged goodnight and tucked into bed. 

Nat set up the baby monitor (Or the child monitor, Daisy wasn’t a baby anymore) next to the bed, clipped the receiver to her belt and went to find Maria. The kept her face studiously blank as she walked through the halls but didn’t even try to fool Maria, who knew her well enough by now to be able to call her out immediately. Maria took one look at her and put down her pen.

“What happened?”

“Daisy wants to meet her father.” Nat said.

Maria blinked, then, to Natasha’s deep relief, took charge. “Sit down, I’ll make coffee.”

Nat sat, and a minute later took the coffee Maria handed her, and took a large enough gulp to feel it burn as it went down. Maria sat on the other end of the couch, angled to face her, and probed as gently as she could.

“Are you ok?”

Nat looked up from her coffee “Do you really want to talk about my feelings?”

“Not really. We’re going to do it anyway.” Maria said bluntly.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I didn’t ask if you did.”

“Hey!” Nat said, but cracked a smile, conceding the unspoken point that she wasn’t going to talk about it if someone didn’t make her. She still didn’t start the conversation, and after a while, Maria did. 

“Nat, we never asked, but, who is Daisy’s father?”

Nat took another gulp of coffee to buy herself some time, then admitted “I don’t really know.”

“You don’t know?” Maria repeated, half incredulous, half worried. 

“His name is Jia-Ying. He lives in this village in Hunan, China and he’s involved with some people with powers. The KGB sent me to investigate him and I did my job but didn’t get anything out of him. He has a friend called Gordon that can appear from thin air. That’s pretty much all I know. I don’t even know how, the red-room they, the graduation ceremony...” Nat trailed off, unable to bring herself to talk about what the graduation ceremony. Maria didn’t ask her to finish the sentence, for which Nat was grateful.

“When did you last see him?”

“Over three years ago. I took Daisy to Hunan, I meant to leave her there, but then I saw Gordon appear and I knew it wasn’t safe.” Her voice is toneless, refusing to remember too closely either that night or the more recent memory of when she’d thought she had to leave Daisy with Laura. 

“So he knows about Daisy”

Nat nodded, although she really didn’t like where this was going.

“Is he dangerous, apart from connections that could bring trouble?”

“I don’t know.” Nat answered honestly, wishing Maria wouldn’t ask what Nat knew she was going to ask next, and knowing she was going to do it anyway.

“Don’t you think he has a right to meet his daughter properly? Don’t you think Daisy has a right to meet her father?”

Nat swallowed hard “She’s my daughter, not his.” 

“I never said she wasn’t.”

“He’s not keeping her.”

“I wasn’t proposing letting him.”

Nat looked down at her half empty coffee mug, swirling the liquid inside. “Maybe when Clint gets back from his op.” she said finally, unable to find a plausible reason for the sickening unease in her gut at the thought of going to Hunan. 


	10. Chapter 10

Which is how, three weeks later, Nat found herself sitting beside Clint in a quinjet, trying to ignore the feeling of dread sitting like lead in her stomach. Daisy was flipping through a book behind her, Clint was next to her and they’d seen Maria, Phil and Fury only hours before. She’d even called Laura at the farm to hear that she was ok. Her family was safe. There was no reason to feel like this. No reason for this creeping feeling up her spine that something terrible was about to happen.

Natasha had learned long ago to trust her instincts. But this was no instinct she’d ever felt before. This combination of deja-vu and creeping dread. Like she was standing on the very edge of a cliff and knew she was about to fall. Like she’d watched herself fall before.

She tried to distract herself towards sensible fears, tried to rationalise the dread through sensible things. How was Jia-Ying going to react? It had been three and a half years since she’d brought Daisy to Hunan and vanished during the night. Last time she’d gone to Hunan Daisy had been 3 months old and Natasha had been Natalia and an utter mess. Now Daisy was nearing 4 and Natasha was, well, she liked to think she was a bit less of a mess.

What if Jia-Ying didn’t want them to leave? What if he got his powered friends to follow them? What if he brought danger to Daisy? What if Daisy fell in love with Jia-Ying and didn’t want to stay with Nat?

This last thought was so horrifying Nat genuinely wondered if it was the source of the dread sitting in her stomach and tightening her limbs. But it felt wrong. There was something. Something had happened. Or would happen. But she couldn’t possibly know what was about to happen. Even good instincts couldn’t tell the future. Could they?

They landed far too soon.

Daisy was a strange mixture of excited babbling and nervous mumblings as they hiked over the mountains from where they could land the quinjet. Nat tried to soothe her daughter, but with every step they took towards the village the dread grew, until her feet felt like lead and she had to fight her instinct to flee. Then they rounded the corner and it was too late, the village lay before them. Daisy squealed with excitement, grabbed Nat’s hand and yanked forwards (at least she hadn’t run off), and Nat let herself be tugged towards the village.

Walking through the village felt dreamlike, like she was seeing everything around her, but warped and blurry. The village felt familiar, but not as it once had, and she somehow knew what she would see even before her eyes found smashed windows, broken gates, weed covered gardens. Everything was eerily familiar, and it threw her so badly she almost forgot the distracted child dragging her through the village. Until the smell hit her and suddenly everything sharpened, the dream shattering under the immediate reality of _Daisy is here_. Adrenaline shot through her body, stronger than she’d felt in months, even on mission, as she grabbed her daughter and sprinted out of the village. Sprinted away from the smell of death that hung over the ghost village like a shroud. Clint saw them as soon as they rounded the corner, and between one moment and the next he had a gun drawn and ready to fire. Nat shook her head sharply, and instead shoved Daisy into his arms.

“Take her back to the quinjet. Give me ten minutes then leave without me. I need to find out what happened.” and then she was running back to the village, some hook in her gut refusing to let her just leave. It would be better to just leave. To not risk anything in this place that smelled like corpses when her Pauchok was _far, far too close_. But something in Natasha _had_ to know, something in Natasha dragged her towards Jia-Ying’s house, dragged her back to the house that mattered more than the entire rest of the village. She entered, and it was like she’d been thrown back into the dream, every single object, every broken plant pot, every smashed photograph exactly where she knew they would be. She went through the house in a daze, a horror building and building and building in her gut. _Something_ dragging at the edges of her consciousness, screaming at her mind. Her body went through familiar motions, picking up a photo from the ground like her body had done it before. But then she turned the photo over, looked through the fractured glass, and recognised it.

It was her. Her and Daisy. Her Pauchok asleep in her arms and her red-hair half-obscuring her face.

She knew this photo.

She’d never seen this photo before.

She knew this photo.

The frame went tumbling to the ground as her head split open with agonising pain. It was like a dozen concussion headaches all added together and she screamed in pain. The world went blurry around her, and when she opened her eyes she found herself out of the house, found her body running, running from the village, down the mountain path and back to the village.

By the time she reached the quinjet, the pain had faded to merely pounding, and Natasha wondered if she’d imagined it all. She had to have. She couldn’t possibly have recognised the photo, couldn’t possibly have known such details about the ransacked village. Dread, that strange dread she’d been feeling since they left, it had made her imagine it. Her mind was playing tricks on her. Nothing else.

Clint had waited for her, even after ten minutes, but he was edgy, having already strapped Daisy in and waiting by the ramp of the jet, his bow notched and drawn. He cast Nat a concerned look when she entered, but delayed asking in order to get the jet in the air. Natasha shoved her own feelings in a little box and went to reassure Daisy, sitting next to her shaken daughter and running her hand over her hair.

“Mama? Did something bad happen?”

Natasha swallowed, trying to work out how much to tell her daughter. She refused to lie to Daisy. She had been lied to too much as a child to be willing to lie to Daisy. But nor was she willing to tell Daisy the complete truth, that it looked like someone, or several people, had gone through the village and killed the residents, likely to find the powered men living there. Trouble came to powered people like flies to honey.

“Yes Pauchok, something bad happened.”

“Is that why we ran away?”

“Yes Pauchok, we didn’t know if it was safe.”

“But mama? You and uncle Clint could have beat up the bad guys!”

Nat had to bite back a laugh at the comment “Uncle Clint and I beat up lots of bad guys,” she agreed “but our job isn’t really to beat up bad guys, it’s to keep people who might get hurt safe. And if we’d stayed you could have gotten hurt.”

“No I couldn’t, you’d have kept me safe. Uncle Phil says you’re almost as badass as Captain America!”

Nat really did laugh at that one, although she strongly suspected that the word ‘badass’ had come from Maria rather than Phil. “We did keep you safe Daisy, we kept you safe by leaving. And don’t say ‘badass’, it’s a naughty word.”

Daisy scrunched her eyebrows up at that logic, but finally shrugged and replied “But auntie Maria says it!”

“Auntie Maria says a lot of naughty words”

Daisy giggled “And then she has to put lots of money in the naughty word jar!”

“Exactly” Nat agreed, relieved to see finally relax a little as she laughed.

But then the smile faded from her face and Daisy asked slowly “Mama? Is my Daddy dead?”

Nat hid her wince, and tried to work out what to say. The truth was that Jia-Ying was almost certainly dead, but she didn’t know for sure. The pause was lengthening to awkwardness though, so she said finally “I don’t know Pauchok, but I’m going to try to find out ok?”

“Ok.” Daisy said, then “Can I take a nap, I don’t feel like reading.”

“A nap sounds like a great idea Pauchok” Nat agreed, although it worried her that Daisy had asked for one. Usually she hated naps.

But once she was strapped in in a sleeping position (Shield quinjets were well designed for exhausted agents) Daisy fell asleep in moments. Nat went up to the cockpit to briefly tell Clint what she’d found in the village, skipping out the strange feeling of familiarity she’d had. Clint frowned when he heard about the headache.

“Does your head still hurt?”

“A bit” Nat admitted

“Which from you means you’ve got a full on migraine.” Clint translated.

Nat scowled, but didn’t deny it.

“Go take a nap, maybe it’ll go away” Clint suggested.

“I’m not a kid, I don’t need a nap.”

“Better than Maria sending you to medical.” Clint pointed out.

Nat scowled again, but when put like that “Good point.”

She pulled the bench down on the other side of the jet and strapped herself in, letting her Pauchok’s breaths and the humming of the jet lull her to sleep. But once asleep, she dreamed.

She dreamed of another quinjet, in another reality. She sat huddled in the co-pilots seat, trying to hide her nerves but knowing Clint could see them anyway. But Clint had her back anyway. He’d given in to her request to fly to Hunan in China rather than to the farm to see Laura without even asking questions. Nat hadn’t volunteered the information. She still wasn’t sure this was a good idea. She’d left her Pauchok in Hunan for a reason. Daisy was safe in Hunan, safe away from her. But her Pauchok was seven now, and Natasha hadn’t seen her daughter in over six years, and she missed her like a hollow ache. She wanted to see her, even if only from a distance. Wanted to see her little girl, know what she looked like.

But even if she didn’t intent to introduce herself to her Pauchok, who couldn’t possibly remember her, she couldn’t help dreaming. Coulson would be proud. He said that dreaming was healthy, not a sign of weakness. Nat wasn’t sure she believed him, but this time, she couldn’t help herself from dreaming. Dreaming that she could go up to her Pauchok, tell her who she was, hold her daughter again, learn all about her life. She wondered if Daisy would like her, if maybe Daisy might love her. But that was stupid. Love is for children. Natasha knew she loved Daisy, and Daisy was safe, and that was enough. She should not go near enough for her Pauchok to even see her.

The dream shifted around her, but not as dreams did. It shifted like a memory, skipping over the journey and stopping when she was hiking up the path to the village, trying to talk herself out of it. This had not been the plan. This was getting too close. Daisy might not recognise her but Jia-Ying certainly would. But then she and Clint got close enough to the village and Natasha forgot about the original plan because this place was not a home. The Black Widow had good instincts and every one of them started screaming from the moment she drew close to the village.

It was the silence that reached her first. The silence of emptiness, the kind of silence that only lives in the long abandoned places or the moments before a trap closes. A gun is in her hand and Clint’s back against her own before she can even think. They separate slowly when no attack comes, advance into the village slowly, carefully.

It’s the smell she notices next. The musty, hollow smell of long gone things, and underneath it, the smell of death. There is a fear gripping her stomach, running icy fingers up her spine, wrapping her limbs in a harsh grip. There is a fear growing stronger and stronger inside her, and she does not dare name it.

It’s the destruction she notices next. The smashed windows, the broken gates, the doors swinging off their hinges, and a hundred other little things that speak of attack and destruction. The fear is growing unbearable, clenching her stomach so tight it is actively painful. She tells Clint to stay here, and doesn’t wait for him to respond, just plunges deeper into the village, rapidly vanishing from sight. It’s a stupid play, and this isn’t an op but it looks like one, and it’s such a stupid play but her partner trusts her. Nat almost wishes he doesn’t, because Clint’s presence beside her is comforting, and Nat doesn’t want to go into that house alone. Doesn’t want to face the fear her mind is dancing around.

She faces it anyway, giving into fear has never been an option for Natasha. Fear killed before the fight even began. But this was a new fear, a fear she’d felt only once before, when a gunshot had missed her baby girl by mere inches. But this wasn’t like last time. Then she’d known her Pauchok was alive, was safe. Now Natasha had to find that information, had to prove to herself that her daughter was ok.

The house looked so different from the last time she’d seen it. Someone had been through the place, had emptied cupboards, smashed crockery, torn through every hiding place there might be in a small house. It was a wreck. She found the photo first, stared shocked at her own face, bent over her daughter’s, and then drank in the sight of her baby girl’s face. It had been so long since she’d seen that face. She took the photo out of the smashed frame and slid it into her pocket. The photo should never have been taken, but she couldn’t undo it now. She hoped no-one had ever recognised the young red-haired woman as the Black Widow. Hoped desperately that no one had connected her with the child in her arms.

She went upstairs, opened the first door and stopped cold. Natasha had read once, in a book Phil had said she might like, that some peoples’ lives were split into before and after. Before something happened, and after. Natasha had thought it was stupid, had said as much, but as she saw that room she wondered if maybe, maybe it wasn’t. The world seemed frozen in that moment, as though time stopped when she opened the door. Or maybe it wasn’t time. Maybe it was Natasha.

Because this had been her daughter’s room. Because there was a cot tipped on its side. Because this room, worse than any other, had been torn apart. Because Nat knew the rust coloured stain on the floor for what it was. Blood. Her daughter’s blood. Her Pauchok’s blood. Who else’s could it be?

The moment ended, and Natasha collapsed to the floor as though her strings had been cut. A scream tore out of her throat, a sound more animal than human, a sound of pure agony, of devastation that Natasha knew she was never, never coming back from. Her Pauchok was dead. Dead. **Dead.**

The knowledge shattered her, ripping her very being into a million irreparable pieces, their edges stabbing into her like broken glass. The knowledge of it should kill her, should stop her heart beating and her blood pumping, but somehow it doesn’t and all Natasha can do is sit there, staring at the room that should have been her daughter’s safe haven, and scream.

Until she wasn’t screaming but for a split second it was as though she was drowning. Cold washed over her, and for an instant Nat thought she had died after all, but then she was spluttering, shuddering her way awake, Clint already preparing another bucket of water to chuck over her. Some corner of her mind wondered where Clint had found two buckets of water on a _quinjet_. But the greater part of her mind was fastened on her daughter’s pale, frightened face as she stood in the middle of the quinjet, unsure whether to approach her or not. Natasha’s hands scrabbled for the button to release herself from the harness and then she was lunging across the jet to her daughter, Daisy meeting her part way, and Daisy was in her arms and she was breathing in the smell of her hair and it was just a dream and _it was just a dream_.

But it had felt so real. It _still_ felt so real. Natasha knew all about things which seemed real that weren’t. Her early memory was a tangle of real and feels-real-but-can’t-be-real. This had to be the latter. But it didn’t feel like one of those memories. It felt real. Really, truly real. Real and solid in a way that her almost 4 year old daughter’s arms around her neck didn’t. Deep, deep in her gut in the place that had never lied to her, the memory felt _real_. But it wasn’t a memory. It couldn’t be a memory. Because Daisy was in her arms, shaking but solid and real and _alive_. And this was real. It had to be. She could see it and touch it and it wasn’t a memory that didn’t line up with reality, it was _now_. So why didn’t it feel as real as her nightmare?

“Mama you’re squishing me.” Daisy complained, and Nat forced herself to loosen her grip, drawing back a little to run her hands over Daisy’s brown locks, to frame her Pauchok’s face in her hands.

“Mama? Did you have a bad dream?”

Natasha swallowed, trying to shake the horror and terror still gripping her body “Yeah Pauchok, I did. I’m sorry I scared you.”

“You screamed Mama, it sounded like you were really hurting.” Daisy said shakily.

Nat hadn’t realised she’d screamed aloud. She _never_ screamed. She woke from nightmares covered in cold sweat and shaking but silent. She never screamed.

“I dreamed you were dead” she said, then had to bite back a swearword. She hadn’t really meant to say that. Daisy _did not_ need to hear that!

“Oh” Daisy said, eyes going wide “Those are _really_ bad dreams!”

Yeah, it was...wait, ‘those’? “What do you mean ‘those’ Pauchok?”

Daisy bit her lip “Sometimes, when you and uncle Clint are gone, I dream you don’t come back.” she admitted.

Natasha felt like someone had punched her in the stomach. Her Pauchok dreamed that she and Clint died? Had dreamed it more than once? No child should have to dream that, should have to worry about that.

“Oh Daisy” she whispered “I will always come back to you.” but even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t fair. She couldn’t know that.

“Promise?” Daisy asked

“I will always do my very, very best to come back to you.” Natasha vowed.

Daisy nodded, and Natasha set to distracting her daughter from the experience of waking up to her mama’s screams. She read to her for a while, and then played eye-spy. But even as she read and played with her daughter, she couldn’t shake the _truth_ of the dream. It didn’t feel like a dream. It felt like a memory. Like something so big and so awful that she couldn’t forget it, not completely.

They’d done something to her head. The red-room. They had done things to her head.

But not this. They couldn’t have done this. This was real. It was. It _**had**_ to be. This wasn’t a dream, it wasn’t an illusion. It was real. Clint was real. Daisy was real. She was imagining the dream, fear was twisting her mind around. It was just a dream.

It had to be.

Because if it wasn’t, then Daisy was dead. And that wasn’t an option.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reality is starting to break through a little for Nat!!!
> 
> Sorry this was a little short, I'm gonna try to get the next chapter up a bit sooner. 
> 
> Comments make me happy.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat gets in trouble, the Romanoffs discover video games, and sometimes Nat really doesn't like her job. Lots of Feelings pretty much throughout.

Maria found an old shield mission, that had been run out of the hub, from several years ago that referred to the destruction in the village in Hunan. Half a shield team had been killed by whatever had destroyed the village. Maria had seen it, but it hadn’t had any meaning in relation to Natasha or Daisy then, and she hadn’t remembered it when Natasha mentioned Hunan, not until Strike Team Delta told her the state of the village. It didn’t really tell them anything they didn’t already know, only confirmed the date of whatever had destroyed the place. Natasha tried to focus on her relief that she hadn’t left Daisy there and forget the unease, but it never entirely left her.

But still, life went on. Daisy started reading simple chapter books in English, with Russian not far behind. The Junior Agents decided to award titles to some of the helicarrier agents and voted on who got what. Clint and Nat were voted joint ‘Biggest Bad Influence’ and were _very proud_. Daisy thought it was hysterically funny. Phil tried to look disappointed in them but ended up looking more resigned. Fury scowled at them. Maria buried her face in her hands and groaned aloud. Strike Team Delta stuck the little plaque they got given on Clint’s door. Maria told them to take it down but they ignored her and she eventually gave up.

Strike Team Delta went on another op that went a little wrong. It wasn’t that Nat got captured, they’d meant to let that happen, interrogations could reveal so much when your mark thinks they are running the interrogation. No, the problem was that these particular marks had developed a new chemical they were very proud of and keen to test, and Nat decided to keep cover and let them stick it in her. It turned out to be more potent than she’d hoped, and while they completed the op, Nat felt distinctly ill by the time they made it to extraction. She then spent most of the flight back puking her guts up, and Phil took one look at her and escorted her, protesting, to medical.

She turned out to be poisoned quite badly, and spent the next day puking, and then the next two bored out of her mind. The drug had clearly run it’s course (she wasn’t puking anymore), and she was _fine_ and it was _stupid_ to keep her there. Eventually, she got sick of waiting around, snuck down the corridor, hacked a computer and declared herself cleared from medical. Ten minutes later she was picking her Pauchok up from Maria, cheerfully telling the commander that she’d been declared healthy, and took Daisy swimming.

Three hours after that, she was on an op with Clint (who she told about what she’d done on the quinjet out and thought it was hilarious). The op went off without a hitch (not even the usual falling apart in the middle and replanning which is normal for Strike Team Delta ops that began without much intel) and she got back in time to read her Pauchok a story and tuck her into bed. By mid-afternoon the next day she was pretty sure she’d gotten away with it and had half-forgotten she’d cleared herself from medical. She was in one of the larger gyms training a handful of the prank-war rookies with Clint when her partner signalled for them to stop sparring. They separated, the rookie gratefully gulping air and trying to rub three places at once, and Clint signed quickly.

“Phil’s at the door looking at us and he’s got that look on his face.”

Nat was way to well trained to look, or to let unease cross her face. “The I-can’t-believe-you-did-that-I’m-so-disappointed-in-you look?” she signed back.

Clint nodded, and Nat frantically ran through the things she and Clint had gotten up to in the last few months that their handler might be upset about. Unfortunately, she only came up with one thing that might warrant _that_ expression.

“Do you think he knows?” she signed.

“ _Agent Romanoff!! Get your ass over here!!”_

Nat turned round to see that Maria had arrived – and that heads were rapidly turning towards her. Most of the helicarrier never saw more than Maria’s (more than a little snappy) ‘Hardass Hill’ front, but even they could tell when the Commander was furious.

“I think that may be a possibility.” Clint said aloud.

Nat gulped. It had been a while since she’d seen Commander Hill that pissed with her.

“What did you _do_?” one of the rookies whispered behind her.

Nat turned to them “Lesson for you lot. Don’t sign yourselves out of medical.” she took a brief satisfaction from the rookies’ eyes widening and then started making her way across the gym to her irate senior officers. She didn’t walk slowly, nor quickly, and kept her face in her usual calm expression. She had no intention of showing the other agents inside the gym that she was in the least bit worried, she had a reputation to maintain. She didn’t even look concerned when she reached Hill and the deputy director grabbed her by the arm and shoved her none-too-gently out of the gym.

Natasha had enough common sense to keep her mouth shut as the senior officer propelled her towards her office, glad at least that Hill was taking her somewhere private before yelling at her. Although when they did reach her office, it probably didn’t matter because Hill was yelling loud enough to be heard across the corridor and in both the deck above and below. Nat listened to the first few sentences, then mostly tuned her out, keeping her face blank. She wasn’t sorry and she wasn’t going to pretend to be. Hill would probably be able to tell if she was pretending anyway. Even so, she couldn’t help wincing a little at the volume that Hill was shouting with. The Commander really was furious. Nat caught words like ‘irresponsible’ and ‘could have been seriously hurt’ and ‘reckless’ among the lecture she was mostly tuning out, but then suddenly Hill was raising her hand and Nat couldn’t help it, she flinched. She’d known she wasn’t going to get away without punishment, but this was Hill and she’d never hit her before and she’d started thinking handlers didn’t do that at shield and she hadn’t been expecting it and....and Hill wasn’t hitting her.

She wasn’t shouting either, she’d frozen, hand mid-gesture, and Nat suddenly realised that was all Hill was doing, gesturing. Emphasising her words with her hands. And then it was Maria looking at her, the anger gone, and she slowly lowered her hand and took a small step back. “I’m not going to hit you Nat.”

“I know.” Nat said, wishing she could escape the looks Maria and Phil were now giving her. “I know.” she repeated “I just didn’t for a moment.”

Maria opened her mouth, and Nat couldn’t bear to hear something sympathetic come out of her mouth so she spoke first. “Are we done here?”

Antagonising Hill probably wasn’t a good idea just then, but Nat didn’t really care, she just wanted to change the subject.

Hill scowled at her, but she doubtlessly knew what Nat was doing and there was no heat behind it. “Don’t do it again.” she said.

“I won’t.” Nat said, and meant it, it was more trouble than it was worth.

“See that you don’t.” Hill said, “And get your ass back to medical.”

Wait, what? No way! “I’m fine!” she protested “I’ve been back in the field without any problem at all! Even Clint said I was fine!”

Oops, Hill was suddenly looking pissed again. “Clint wouldn’t know fine if it hit him in the face!”

“Hey!”

There was a short silence as Nat, Maria and Phil all turned to look at the ceiling, and then a sheepish voice said “Sorry?”

Maria turned to Phil “They’re _your_ agents.” she moaned.

Nat held her snort of laughter back with difficulty, but then unfortunately Phil was stepping forwards, his face a picture of disappointment, and it suddenly wasn’t funny. She hated Phil’s disappointed looks, even if she’d never admit it.

“Clint get down here.”

There was a shuffle from the ceiling, then the air vent opened and Clint dropped down.

“You knew about this?”

Clint stared at his feet for a moment then “Yeah, I knew” he admitted.

Phil opened his mouth, but for the second time in as many minutes Nat spoke first. “It wasn’t his fault, he didn’t even know I’d done it until we were on the quinjet out.”

Phil ignored her “I see, you may go, but I want you to think about what could have gone wrong. Dismissed.”

Clint nodded, and though he hadn’t been punished, Nat could see in the slight hang of his head the way their handler’s disappointment weighed on him. The edges of anger twisted with guilt in her stomach as she watched Clint go. Coulson was like a father to Clint, he had to know what his words did to him. And Clint _hadn’t done anything_! She rounded on Coulson as soon as the door clicked shut, but before she could even open her mouth Coulson was snapping “Sit. Down.” and Natasha found herself obeying.

The lecture that followed wasn’t angry or shouted, it was calm and measured, and it burned in a way that Maria’s hot anger hadn’t. Nat had been able to tune Maria out but, somehow, she couldn’t tune out Phil’s disappointed words as he told her how she couldn’t have known if she was completely healthy, and how she could have become ill again on mission, and how much danger it had put her in. It stung. It wasn’t a reprimand - not in the way of a handler to their agent, it was personal - it was Phil lecturing Natasha, and it stung. Until suddenly she couldn’t bear it anymore and words were tumbling past her lips.

“What does it matter? I completed the op, nothing went wrong, I’m effective in the field. _Why does it matter_?”

“It matters because we love you.” Phil said, and Nat felt panic jump in her chest, like when you were balanced on the edge of a wall and you knew you were about to fall.

“Love is for children.” she denied, the words tumbling with dreadful familiarity from her lips.

“No.” Maria said, speaking for the first time in ten minutes “Love isn’t just for children. We love you Nat. We love you enough to shout at you for doing stupid things.”

Nat’s eyes burned, and she opened her eyes wide, letting the air dry her eyes out, her throat tight with words she’d never dared say, and hurts she’d never been allowed to show. She knew they weren’t lying. Knew the red-room had lied to her. Knew they’d lied to her about a lot of things. But there was a difference between knowing and _knowing_. A difference between dancing around truths and having them said to her face. She nodded jerkily, not trusting herself enough to open her mouth.

Neither Phil nor Maria said anything for a long time, nor did they approach her or attempt to hug her, for which Nat was deeply grateful. There was only so much being overwhelmed she could take before she bolted. Finally she swallowed hard, and changed the subject.

“If I take some blood and send it to medical can I stay out?”

Maria hesitated, but finally nodded “No training until you are cleared for real, and _definitely_ no missions. And you’ll report back here to help with paperwork every night for the rest of the month.”

Nat nodded in acceptance at Maria and headed for the door, stepping out and turning to close it, but before she did, she hesitated “You guys know I...you know right?” _Please don’t make me say it._

Phil met her eyes, nodding “We know.”

“Good” Nat said thickly, and vanished.

She want and got the blood test quickly, and then collected Daisy from Fury (she had been with Maria, but Maria had passed her to Fury before going to find Phil and then Nat) and played board games with her until she felt like she’d shoved the conversation with Maria and Phil to the edge of her mind. Then they played board games some more until Nutella came over to investigate the pieces and they had to pack it away and play with the not-really-a-kitten-anymore instead. Not that either of them minded.

Two days later Nat found herself actually opening up in therapy, for a suitable definition of opening up that involved going blank faced and talking in a monotone in a slavic dialect (that her therapist didn’t speak) about _Love is for Children_ and _Only the breakable ones_ and _You are marble_ and _You have no place in the world._ She just sat there and talked and she could feel tears slipping down her blank face and even though he didn’t understand the words she could see the man’s face going paler and paler and she knew even before she left the room that she’d scared him off. Maria scowled when she heard and muttered that shield therapists ought to be made of stronger stuff. Nat commented that he’d seemed pretty strong and Maria gave her a sympathetic look and a mug of strong coffee before they got down to paperwork. She had sorted all the paperwork into piles according to whether it had anything to do with injuries and given anything to do with medical to Nat. She was not amused.

A week after that Nat got a call from a sci-tech friend (well, the scientist thought they were friends, Nat thought they were two people who exchanged mutual favours. But then, Nat only really called friends the people she would die for.) who had been trying to develop glow in the dark paint that was invisible in light and glowed strongly in the dark. He’d made some progress, he explained, but while it was invisible, and did glow brightly for several hours, it had a time lag of several hours as well, so it wouldn’t glow until hours after the light source was switched off. He said he was still working on it, but wondered if Nat or Clint could do him a favour and dispose of the first batch for him. His grin as he said it told Nat that he still remembered the prank war fondly, and knew _exactly_ what he was doing.

Nat and Clint knew what they were doing too. They spent the rest of that afternoon with massive sheets of card and scissors, making stencils. The early morning saw Nat and Clint crawling through the vents after a grinning Daisy. They painted over the cardboard stencils all over the helicarrier, creating glowing skeletons and ghosts on the walls. A night later though, as they watched (yawning a little) from the vents as the night shift agents freaked out, Nat and Clint found that Daisy’s handprints scattered randomly around the corridors were surprisingly creepy; and the several smiley faces, that almost seemed to jump out at agents turning the corner, were creepier than anything they’d planned. Phil confiscated the remaining paint afterwards, and made them wash all the paint off the walls, but it was more than worth it.

Clint made a comment one evening during conversation about being unbeatable at computer games. Nat replied from the floor, where she was doing a jigsaw puzzle with Daisy, that it couldn’t be that hard, you just had to press buttons, and there was a sudden silence and she looked up to find both Clint and Maria looking at her in _horror_.

“You’ve never played a computer game?!?!?!” Clint exclaimed.

Nat shook her head, hiding her smile at her partner’s dramatics. Surprisingly though, it was Maria that announced she had to try it. Right now.

Half an hour later Nat found herself in the break room getting a garbled introduction to Mario Cart from Clint and Maria, a bemused Phil watching from the sidelines, having refused to get involved in it. It proved to be rather harder than Nat had expected, her mind and fingers struggling to get the hang of the buttons and switches. Clint and Maria beat her by a significant margin the first time, but by the third she was getting the hang of it, by the fourth she was keeping up and by the fifth she was challenging them, and it only got more competitive from there. Maria turned out to be very, very good at it, beating Clint the first two games (to his shock and indignation). Daisy, unsurprisingly, got bored watching after ten minutes or so, and demanded a go herself, so they let Daisy try some of the easier tracks.

Computer games, Nat discovered that evening, were three things: fun; competitive; and very, very exciting to small children. She decided that evening, after having to remove two day’s worth of desert privileges and threaten removal of that weeks trampolining and zip-wire time to get Daisy into bed, that they were never playing computer games before bed again. Ever.

The following two weeks however included computer games crammed into any spare ten minutes they could find as Clint and Nat fought to remove Maria from the top of the score board and at the same time unlock all the maps. By the end of two weeks they’d managed the latter but were still frustratingly behind Maria on the scoreboard. One evening, during a particularly intense race, a junior agent came in with a folder for the deputy director, only to find the famous ‘Hardass Hill’ hunched over on a sofa, elbows braced on her knees, game controller in hand and look of intense concentration on her face. As if this wasn’t enough, the legendary Hawkeye was sprawled on his stomach on the floor, with his _ex-assassin_ partner lying _upside down_ on the sofa, her daughter jumping up and down next to it yelling “Go, auntie Maria, go!” (Daisy had quickly worked out who was best and promptly joined the winning side.)

Nat sensed the agent enter, but choose not to move, partly so as not to betray her embarrassment that she’d been caught in such a position, and partly to maintain her position in the game. She did however inwardly groan when she heard the unmistakable click of a camera. Maria and Clint heard it too, and the game suddenly devolved into chaos as Clint turned around and Maria dropped her controller and twisted on the sofa. The agent hurriedly lowered the camera and shoved it in his pocket (a small standard issue one designed to fit into a tac-suit pocket).

“Uh, Agent Renalds sent me to give you this ma’am.” the agent said, the only sign of his nervousness a slight bob of his adams apple. It was one of the prank war rookies, Nat noted with an inward groan; there was _no way_ that photo wouldn’t have made its way through the entire helicarrier by evening.

“Thank you agent. You may go.” Maria said, sounding remarkably professional for someone currently turning the approximate shade of a tomato. The agent fled, and Nat watched him go with a tinge of mournfulness, knowing her Black Widow image had just taken a serious hit.

“Damn it, it’s going to be weeks before we hear the end of that.” Maria sighed.

“Swear jar” Clint and Nat both said automatically, although both agreed with the sentiment, and Daisy giggled.

“I can’t, it’s full” Maria commented idly as she opened the file. Nat pulled it out of the cupboard and found that it was indeed full.

“What do we do with it now?” she asked.

“Give it back to me? Most of its mine.” Maria said grumpily but without any heat.

Nat just laughed at her, Maria _had_ put most of it in; she swore more than her, Clint, Phil and Fury put together.

“Maybe Daisychain should get to decide, given she’s why it was started.” Clint said, referring to Nat’s (backed by Phil) decision to implement a swear jar after Daisy had announced ‘D is for Damn’.

“Puppy!” Daisy shouted instantly.

“No” Nat, Clint and Maria said in chorus. It was the fiftieth or so time they’d heard that particular request and the answer hadn’t changed from the first time. A cat on the helicarrier was one thing, a dog was another. And Nutella had been stretching the limits of what was allowable on a military base practically to breaking point already. Not that Daisy just being on the base didn’t redefine those rules anyway.

Maria finally looked up from the file, a frown on her face “It’ll have to wait until you get back anyway, I’m gonna need to send you two undercover.”

“Both of us?” Clint said (usually it was only Nat sent undercover as she was better at it. Clint was best at a distance.) just as Nat’s shoulders slumped and she asked resignedly “How long?”

“Yes, both, and at least a few weeks” Maria said with a grimace.

“But my birthday’s in two weeks.” Daisy piped up, “Mama can’t go away for that.”

There was a short, awkward pause, in which Nat realised Daisy was right and felt her heart sink even further, and Daisy’s face began to crumple. Nat looked at Maria pleadingly, but her superior grimly shook her head, and Nat understood the unspoken message. Whatever the op was, it was important enough that they needed their best on it.

“I’m sorry Pauchok” Nat said, the words feeling hopelessly inadequate. Sometimes, being the best sucked.

“No!” Daisy denied “You’re not going! It’s not fair!” her voice rose to a shout, one foot stomping against the floor.

“Daisy,” Nat said warningly, despite the fact that she rather agreed with the sentiment “having a tantrum isn’t going to change anything.”

“Nooo!” Daisy wailed, brown curls flying as she shook her head “You said we’d go to the water park!”

“We’ll still go Daisy, I promise, just a little later.” She knelt down in front of her daughter, pushing back her own tears as she opened her arms in a silent offer. Daisy ignored it.

“No-oo! It’s not faaaaiir! I want you heeeeeeeeere!”

Nat couldn’t help remembering Daisy’s admission in the jet back from Hunan that she sometimes dreamed that her mother and uncle wouldn’t come back from missions. She was the worst mother in the world. For the first time in her life she really, seriously considered refusing a mission, claiming some leave or something. But she’d seen the look on Maria’s face, they needed her on this. And Nat was rather invested in keeping the world spinning like it was. And she owed the world. Owed it a lot. Her ledger still hung like a millstone around her heart. But Daisy was right, this wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Daisy should have to miss out on celebrating her birthday on her birthday. It wasn’t her fault her mother was a murderer with debts to pay.

“I’m sorry.” she said uselessly “I’m sorry Pauchok, I’m really sorry.”

And it was all Nat could do not to cry herself as Daisy sank to the floor and started crying, knowing there was nothing she could do to change it. Sometimes, Nat thought as she picked Daisy up and rocked her in her arms, she really hated her job.

\-------------

Nat spoiled Daisy as much as she could in the 24 hours before they had to leave, taking her both trampolining and on the zip-wire, and packing a bag for Daisy to take to the farm for a few weeks. It was the only consolation she could really offer when she was about to go away for at least 3 weeks and miss her birthday. They dropped her off with Laura on the way to the op, and Daisy tried to smile as she waved them off, but didn’t quite manage it, even though she loved the farm and adored her aunt Laura. Natasha wondered how on earth she of all people had ended up with a kid as amazing as Daisy and tried to ignore the pit in her stomach at the thought of not seeing her baby girl for the greater part of a month.

The op wasn’t nearly the longest Nat had ever been on, but it felt like it. While Clint had gone in as well, he’d gone in separately, into a different part of the organisation they were trying to take down, and Nat barely even glimpsed him for weeks. His job was to work his way high enough to be sent on jobs, and no further, while Nat’s was to work her way all the way to the top, as quickly as she could. She did it, and it turned out it was good that she did, as the terrorist organisation was planning on detonating three nuclear bombs soon in an attempt to start another world war. Despite the op turning out to be every bit as important as Maria had thought it would be, Nat hated every moment. She missed her Pauchok even worse than she usually did, and to make it worse she woke up covered in cold sweat every single night, haunted by a ransacked house and blood-stained floor and unable to shake the feeling that the nightmare was _real_ and the world around her was not.

The feeling was wrong. It had to be wrong. But it was so much harder to push it to the background without Daisy’s physical presence to remind her that her daughter was alive, was ok. She couldn’t even risk a phone call on this op, her position was too unstable and it was too important that she get the information shield needed.

By the time the op finally finished, with all three bombs located and disarmed and dozens of terrorists arrested, Nat had never been more glad to see the back of an op in her life. Even the three broken ribs and half a dozen knife wounds she’d collected couldn’t ruin her mood. The knife wounds were only shallow cuts and broken ribs were hardly unfamiliar. She and Clint stitched themselves up, point blank refused to go to medical, announced they were taking the next week off and commandeered a quinjet. She called ahead to let Laura know they were coming, and would be there before Daisy woke up (it was almost midnight at the farm by then).

Natasha wished she could have photographed the look on Daisy’s face when she woke up the next morning, but she’d barely been awake herself when she’d heard Daisy stir. She’d had less than three hours sleep and on any other morning she’d have moaned just at the thought of getting up, but the thought of finally hugging her daughter had her eyes opening willingly and her lips pulling up into a smile.

“Good morning Pauchok.”

“ ** _MAMA!!!!_** ”

A distant yelp that sounded like Laura and a thump that was almost certainly Clint leaping out of bed indicated the rest of the house was now awake too. Natasha sent a silent apology to her partner. But then Daisy was leaping into her arms and Nat forgot to care about anything but her daughter.

“I missed you Daisy.”

“Missed you more Mama, you were gone forever!”

“Not possible, and it did feel like it didn’t it?”

“Are you staying for a while?”

“I am, we’ve got a weeks holiday and I’m not going _anywhere_ without you!”

“Yayyyy” Daisy announced, bouncing in Nat’s arms in a way that suddenly reminded her that she had broken ribs “Can we play Mario Cart? I’m getting really good! I’m gonna beat uncle Clint!”

“Sure Pauchok” Nat agreed “But why don’t you get dressed first hmm? I’m just gonna go use the bathroom.” Which had a first aid kit she could use to change the dressing on her cuts and check her ribs.

“Ok, race you!” Daisy said, jumping down from her lap and and diving into the cupboard in a whirl of brown hair and cat-in-the-hat pyjamas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got half of the next chapter already written, and it should be up sometime in the next 3-4 days hopefully.
> 
> Tell me what you think, comments make me happy (seriously, I treasure all comments!!).


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy's birthday is celebrated and she decides at the ripe old age of 4 what she wants to do with her life. Natasha does not approve.

The week that followed was one of the most wonderful Nat could remember. The first day was spent getting pulled over the farm by her hyper daughter and shown everything Daisy had been doing in the last three and a half weeks, from drawings to clay models to Mario Cart to Turtle draw (which thankfully turned out to be a computer program that let Daisy draw pictures using code and not a pet). The next five days were spent all over the farm, surrounding countryside and nearby town. They had no less than three picnics; took Daisy to McDonald's for the first time; and built a massive, half-metre wide sandcastle in the playground complete with high towers and defensible positions and Clint made Nat laugh out loud by asking what she thought her red-room teachers would think of how Nat was using her skills.

Finally, on the last day before they were due to fly back to the Helicarrier, they went to a water park. They used fake identities again, Clint and Laura becoming Clyde and Lydia Holds, tagging along with their sister and niece (Susanne and Katie Holds) to the water-park. All of them wore full body swimming costumes to make Nat and Clint look a little less strange in theirs (unavoidable if they didn’t want to explain the red lines from half-healed cuts or the blue bruises that both still carried), and both Clint and Nat downplayed the extent of their injuries (they knew they were perfectly fine to go swimming and messing around, they came out of many training sessions this bruised and carried on fine after all, but Laura had more normal definitions of healthy-enough).

The water park wasn’t like Natasha had expected. She could of course swim like a fish, and she’d already learned that swimming didn’t have to be the hell it often was in the red-room, and could in fact not be painful at all, but she hadn’t realised that swimming could be _fun_. Nat had of course tried to make swimming lessons fun for Daisy, and knew that her daughter had enjoyed them. But she hadn’t realised that swimming could be fun for _adults_. And then she’d gone to a water-park with Daisy, Clint and a bemused Laura.

Clint couldn’t swim as well as Nat could (mainly because he’d never been thrown fully-clothed into a lake during the spring melt and made to swim for hours or freeze or get shot trying to get out), but he was still a strong swimmer and he was much, much better at water games. He also seemed to have been saving as much of it up as possible to bring out at the water-park. Within a minute of entering the water Nat found one leg being yanked sharply and then she was under the water. The following game of ducking each other rapidly devolved into a full out everyone-for-themselves water fight, with Daisy shrieking with laughter and coming out on top because neither Clint or Nat had the heart to splash her properly. Just as the water fight drew to a close, the wave machine in the pool got turned on, and then of course they had to build a raft out of white buoyancy-aids and ride the waves. The fact that the rafts inevitably came apart by the second wave and dumped the rider in the water only made it more fun. Daisy shrieked with laughter and loved the waves so much that Nat made a mental note to try to take her to the seaside sometime. Rafts were followed by games of swim-through-the-human-loop (Nat and Clint would go under water and make a circle by holding each other’s ankles and bending), and then a laughing Laura (who Nat was _sure_ she’d heard commenting to another parent “Yeah, those are my kids over there, although technically the bigger two are my husband and sister-in-law.”) reminded them that the pool was only the first stop of the water-park and they should probably start towards the next part.

Daisy didn’t want to leave the pool, and was only finally coaxed out with the promise of a ride on Nat’s shoulders to whatever was next. She still exuded an air of disappointment at leaving the water though, and Nat couldn’t help agreeing. As Daisy put it “This is the most funnest thing we’ve ever done!”. Nat didn’t think anything else could be as fun as playing in the water with her daughter and brother (Laura while she didn’t mind water, didn’t actively enjoy swimming that much and mostly enjoyed watching from the sidelines.). And then she saw the water slides.

To reassure Daisy, who was a little nervous at first (a little unusual for Nat’s usually reckless bundle of energy), Nat went first. She imagined it would be like going down the slide at the playground, just without the baby on her lap, but she hadn’t fully factored in the length of the slide or the speed that the water helped create. The fact that she was wearing an almost full body swimsuit also meant there wasn’t any skin to grip the slide. She shot down the slide and (instinctively straightening her body to go as fast as possible) right off the end of the flat patch at the end. It took her several seconds to realise she was grinning with her whole face without any intention behind the smile, and the shock of just how _open_ she was almost wiped the smile off her face. When exactly had she become comfortable enough to have instinctive facial expressions? Facial expressions that were completely Natasha, not a cover? But then Daisy, emboldened by her Mama’s confidence, was flying down the slide too, shouting “Wheeeeee” with a level of glee that only children can really express. Her grin as she got up and walked off the flat part of the slide was so bright Nat felt like a light was shining into her very soul and she completely forgot the moment she’d just had.

“ _That was better than the zip-wire_.” Daisy pronounced with tones of such solemn awe that Nat suddenly found herself laughing helplessly.

A staff member waved for them to move out the way before Nat was completely done laughing, and she and Daisy stumbled to the side still giggling.

“We have _got_ to do that again.” Nat said to her daughter, and Daisy beamed up at her with a look so delighted it made Nat wish she could bottle the feeling in her chest.

They did go down again. And again. And again. And would have gone another time except Clint reminded them that there was a whole water park to go round and there were _many_ other water-slides. Nat pouted at her partner’s teasing (and slightly exasperated) grin, only to turn to Laura in confusion when the woman burst out laughing.

“That’s the _exact_ face Daisy gives me when I say only one cookie!” her sister-in-law finally gasped, and Nat found that even superspies can blush when embarrassed enough.

They still went down the next slide four times, and the next. Nat wasn’t even going to attempt to pretend Daisy was dragging her back to the line. Although she certainly didn’t need convincing. They were dragging each other. The two of them may not agree on the necessity of going on world-changing missions over Daisy’s birthday, but mother and daughter definitely agreed that water-slides were the ‘best invention in all of time’ (Daisy’s words).

Nat knew from the teasing grin on Clint’s face when they went back to go down another slide again, that she wasn’t going to hear the end of this for a long, long time. But it was worth it. It was worth it for the delight on her Pauchoks face every time. It was worth it to queue up with her Pauchok’s hand in hers and share the excitement (although Nat kept hers calmer than bouncing up and down, she had _some_ dignity left) of the water park. It was worth it to hear Daisy’s squeals of joy as she went down, and the feeling like she might just be able to take off and fly when she went down herself. Natasha had never been a child. She’d never been allowed it. She wondered if maybe this was what children felt, like the world was just one big place to run and play, like the only monsters in the world were under the bed and could be scared away with cuddles. Natasha didn’t forget who she was, she didn’t forget the Black Widow, or her ledger or the debts she owed. But she set it aside. For one day, for this day, she could just be Natasha. Just be someone experiencing a water park for the first time. Just be a mother doing something with her daughter. Just a mother doing something _awesome_ with her daughter.

Once upon a time Natasha had been sure of only one thing about herself, been certain of only one thing: that she loved Daisy more than life itself. Now she could add many things to the ‘This is not a cover, this is Me’ list. And that morning, holding her bouncing daughter by one hand, she added another indisputable fact. Natasha _loved_ water parks. She loved the smile on Daisy’s face. She loved the rush of sliding down, of air rushing past her face when there was no danger. Of feeling like she could just take off and fly.

Daisy’s face when they hit a restricted slide was almost heart breaking. Her whole face crumpled when she was told she was too young for the steepest tube slide and tears immediately started threatening. Nat rapidly calculated the actual risk involved, and Daisy’s swimming skill, and took charge.

“Alright, we’ll take one of the others” she said aloud, while signing behind her back _Clint, distract him_.

Daisy’s face lit up in glee, then quickly dampened back to disappointed with a skill that spoke of significant hours of pranking. Nat adjusted her gaze a little to see Clint sign _On it_ as he stepped forwards to ask about the differences between the slides and pretend he was really nervous and generally pull the man’s attention away from the actual slides. Neither of them wasted time, Nat shielding Daisy a little with her body, drawing attention away from the child climbing into the 6+ slide, as Daisy climbed up, sat down, and pushed off without hesitation. She counted down ten seconds, then quickly followed. The last thing she saw was Laura signing _You’re going to get us all kicked out_ and the last thing she heard was the staff worker’s yell of outrage.

The slide was brilliant. Sadly, they couldn’t go down it again, they didn’t even try.

They broke for lunch shortly after that, the red wristbands granting them access to one of the many food places scattered around the park. They all inhaled sandwiches, and crisps, and Nat remembered to make Daisy eat an apple too. The afternoon passed in a blur of every type of water slide Nat could imagine, from normal slides to tubes to steep slides they had to sit in a boat to go down, and another they had to sit in a circular boat that spun through tubes and left Nat, Clint and Daisy whooping and Laura looking a little green and announcing she was going to watch them go down next time.

By the time they were done it was five in the afternoon, and Daisy was drooping seriously even though she was four and ‘a big girl and I don’t need naps an’ ‘m not tired’. They went back to the quinjet and Nat prompted Daisy into a sleepy “Thank you for having me Auntie Laura. I love you. Bye-bye.” before she strapped Daisy into a sleeping position on the jet. Daisy was asleep before they even got off the ground. Nat watched her with a smile that she’d never admit was sappy, but she knew was. What would the red-room think of her now? That she was compromised probably. They never understood. For all Madam B’s insistence on _love is for children_ and _the ceremony is necessary_ , she didn’t understand love at all. Compromised didn’t even begin to describe Natasha now. Compromised was so laughably inadequate a description as to be wholly irrelevant.

They dropped Laura back at the farm on the way back, Nat hugging her sister-in-law goodbye and then vanishing into the cockpit to give Clint and Laura a chance to be alone. She ran through pre-flight while he was gone, but didn’t protest when he kicked her out of the pilots seat when he got back. She was content to watch Clint take the plane up through sleepy eyes, safe in the knowledge that Clint was a good pilot. And more importantly, he wouldn’t shoot her when she let her guard down. How things had changed. She seemed to be thinking that a lot today. Maybe because what she’d spent the day doing was so utterly beyond anything she’d ever imagined as a student in the red-room.

“What’s up?” Clint asked, and Nat wasn’t even surprised her partner could tell something was on her mind.

“Just thinking how much things have changed.” she answered honestly “I never dreamed I could have this.”

“This?” Clint repeated questioningly

Nat waved a hand “Any of it, all of it. Daisy. You. Parks. Fun. Laughing for the sake of it.” _Love_.

Clint’s eyes are soft as he looks at her, and for a moment Nat thinks he’s going to say what she’d left unsaid and tenses slightly. But instead Clint says “You two looked so alike today.”

Nat raised an amused eyebrow “She looks nothing like me, she takes after her dad almost completely.”

“Maybe physically” Clint said, “But you should have seen your faces today, you were like peas in a pod. Same smiles, same laughs, same pout!”

“We are never going to speak of that again.” Nat warned, but she couldn’t help feeling selfishly warm at the thought. That her daughter had her mannerisms, took after her in some way. It felt selfish, to be glad her daughter took after her in some way, even though she was, well, the Black Widow. But it couldn’t quite feel wrong, couldn’t snuff out the bright joy at the thought of the little girl sleeping in the main part of the jet behind them.

\---------------

Daisy didn’t even stir as Nat unstrapped her from the quinjet and carried her to bed. She slept through Nat showering and going to bed herself and was still sleeping when Nat woke with a shuddering gasp six hours later. For once she hadn’t dreamed of Hunan, but the nightmare still left her covered in a cold sweat and she gave up on sleeping for the night. She’d had more sleep than she usually got the last week anyway, she’d be fine. She left a note on her bed for Daisy and set up the baby monitor (so she’d know when Daisy woke up) before heading for the gym to work out for a couple of hours until the nightmare felt further away. She needn’t have bothered with either note or monitor though, as her daughter was only just stirring when she got back.

“Morning Mama” Daisy murmured sleepily as Nat pulled the curtains on the bed back a little.

“Morning Pauchok” she smiled “Did you sleep well.”

Daisy grinned as she sat up, announcing “I dreamed I was flying to the moon, but then I lost my wings halfway up, but it was ok because you and uncle Clint caught me in a plane, and we went to the moon and there was an elephant there called Jeff, and Jeff was scared of water but I told him about water-slides, and then he wanted to try but he couldn’t fit in the quinjet back to earth so we dug a well and made a water slide all the way back to earth and then I woke up!”

Nat blinked, tried to make sense of that sentence, and then gave it up as a bad job “That’s nice.” she said a little lamely. “What would you like for breakfast?”

“Chocolate waffles.” Daisy replied instantly

“What would you like that you are allowed?” Nat clarified.

Daisy pouted for a moment, but tried again “Waffles with maple syrup?”

Nat thought about it “Yes as long as you have some fruit with it.”

“Deal” Daisy agreed, perking up.

“OK, I’m just going to grab a quick shower, can you get dressed while I’m gone?”

Daisy nodded, determination washing over her face, and Nat vanished into the bathroom. When she came out, drying her hair with a towel, she had to bite back a grin at what Daisy was wearing. She had on dark blue jeans with kittens on them (a gift from Phil), combined with a black top with ‘Most Dangerous Agent On Base’ (Clint was responsible for that one) written on the front, odd socks, odd shoes and one of Nat’s jackets (which came down to her knees). The overall effect was rather odd. Nat reclaimed the jacket from a giggling Daisy, located the other half of her daughter’s favourite pair of sneakers and swapped it for the boot on her left foot, and left the rest alone.

“Can you braid my hair?”

“Sure Pauchok, what kind would you like?”

“French braid. No! Two French braids.” Daisy decided.

“Sure? How about three French braids?” Nat teased, hunting through the cluttered bedside table for Daisy’s hairbrush.

Unfortunately, Daisy’s face lit up at the thought “Yesss! Three braids!”

Bother, now she was going to have to work out how to make three braids, there was no disappointing that face. Luckily she managed it, giving Daisy two French braids on the sides of her head and one at the back, and they took to the vents to get breakfast with Daisy only looking a little odd...well, no odder than expected given the hairstyle. Clint was waiting for them in the vents, which said rather a lot about how often the three of them actually used the corridors, and they went to get breakfast together before heading to Phil’s office to see if there was a plan for the day beyond training.

They got to Phil’s office only to find that Maria and Fury were also there, and had wrapped packages with them. Oh right, Daisy had been away from the helicarrier for her birthday. Daisy had evidently forgotten about this too, or not realised the implications, because she gave a surprised squeal of excitement when Phil held his parcel out with a “Happy birthday monkey”

The parcel turned out to hold two new films and a computer game, much to Daisy’s delight. All three are however almost completely forgotten when Daisy opens Fury’s gift and finds a laptop computer. Nat isn’t quite sure she appreciates Fury giving Daisy a computer without asking her first (Nat tries to limit the amount of screen-time Daisy has because one of the parenting books said screens were bad for children’s eyes and general development), but given how much Daisy had been enjoying playing Turtle draw on Laura’s battered desktop, and the utter delight on Daisy’s face, Nat decided not to say anything.

Daisy announces that Fury is the ‘best grandpa in the whole wide world!’ and all the other adults in the room politely pretend not to notice how touched he looks. Nat briefly considers mass producing the photo Clint just took of the flying bear hug her Pauchok gave Fury and posting it around the helicarrier, but decides against it. As amusing as it would be, she didn’t want to know what Fury would do if they did that to his big-bad-boss-spy reputation.

Then Maria holds out her gift and Daisy opens it and instantly announces in tones of great joy “Just like Mama!” and Nat saw what it was.

Maria had ordered a Daisy-sized tac-suit. A Daisy sized Black Widow tac-suit. Nat took one look at the suit, and the delight on her daughter’s face, and glared at her superior. Daisy was going to be perfectly normal. She was _not_ going to be a spy and Nat did _not_ need Maria encouraging her that it was cool! Maria just smirked back at her. Nat would have said something, but Clint chose that moment (probably hoping his partner was distracted enough not to notice) to slip Daisy something else. This was suspicious not only because he was trying to hide it, but also because he’d clearly waited until they weren’t near Laura to give it to Daisy.

“Oh, what’s in there Pauchok?” she asked casually, giving Clint a _What are you up to?_ look.

Clint winced, and tried to look innocent, his body language screaming _No-thing_.

Nat just raised an eyebrow. _Yeah right._

By this time Daisy had gotten the wrapping paper off the parcel, to reveal a brown leather strip rolled into a tube. Clint started backing towards the door. Daisy unrolled the leather to reveal a set of lock-picks and Clint ran for it, Nat, Maria and Phil’s shouts echoing after him.

“Pauchok, I’m sorry, but you’re not allowed to play with those.”

Daisy stuck her bottom lip out “But I’ll be good with them?” she tried. Nat tried to think of things that involved lock-picks that could be called ‘being good’ and came up blank.

“You can have them back when you’re older.” she said firmly. _A lot_ older.

Daisy huffed, but grumpily handed them over.

“Thank you Pauchok” Nat said, brushing a kiss on the top of her daughter’s hair. “Why don’t you go see if your grandpa can help you set up your laptop? I need to go have a few words with uncle Clint....”

\----------

Age 4 seemed to bring with it a desire to be ‘just like Mama’, and to do _everything_ that Mama was doing. Natasha was distinctly not happy with this development. Not only was she near the top of the list of people she did _not_ want Daisy to look up to, but Daisy had excitedly announced that when she grew up, she wanted to ‘be a ninja and save the world’ too. Nat tried talking about how it was really the people who gathered intel that saved the world, and ‘Don’t you want to work with computers Pauchok?’ but it didn’t seem to be working. Nat really, really hoped Daisy grew out of it.

Aside from fears about the future, Daisy wanting to be ‘just like Mama’ was some mix of extremely cute and seriously inconvenient. Despite how much Daisy loved her uncles, aunt and grandpa, 9 times out of 10 she would refuse to be babysat. If Nat was training, then Daisy had to run around the gym too, or bat at a punch bag with little fists, or pretend to be taking down invisible assailants. The mini-ops suit got worn so often that some of the helicarrier agents started calling her Agent Daisy or Mini-Romanoff. Daisy became such a frequent shadow in the gyms that some of the junior agents took to teaching Daisy how to punch. Nat forbade it half a dozen times, and then found herself taking over one lesson because they were teaching her how to punch like she _wasn’t half their size and needed to punch differently_.

(And then there was the Agent Ronson incident and Nat stopped protesting at all and caved to Maria and Fury’s arguments that it wouldn’t hurt for Daisy to be able to defend herself. The agent had had a bad day and, when Daisy had gotten in his way, slapped her across the face. Daisy had let out a shocked wail of pain, and Nat had half flown across the room to scoop her up, followed inches behind by Clint who punched Ronson so hard his head had bounced off the wall. Nat had rushed out of the gym with Daisy, mind half on soothing her daughter and checking the damage and half on wishing she could beat the man herself. She has to satisfy herself with the fact that Clint does a pretty good job of it and doesn’t even get into that much trouble with Phil and Maria for it. Ronson gets fired.)

But even if Nat finally caved to teaching Daisy self defence (and offence, because Nat knew well the limits of only defending yourself), it did not make having a four year old along to every training session convenient. Especially when she was training the rookies, who tended to get distracted by a cute little four year old. Nat waspishly observed to Clint after one training session that Daisy was behaving better than the adults, at least she was obediently repeating the punches and blocks Nat had shown her, rather than watching someone else and losing track of their surroundings. Having Daisy along to obligatory courses (which all agents had to take every so often to keep their skills sharp) like wilderness survival also tended to make those courses more interesting (although Nat had to admit the courses were so much more fun with Daisy tagging along). Nat did however draw the line firmly at Daisy coming anywhere near the firing range. The one and only time Daisy snuck in after her she scolded the girl so sharply Daisy burst into tears and Nat felt terrible (but not terrible enough to soften, because this was _important_.) but still banned Daisy from all activities remotely to do with training for a week.

And it wasn’t just physical training. If Nat was reading mission briefings, Daisy had to read something too (Fury gave Daisy adventure books in English, Russian and Mandarin that made Nat groan ‘don’t encourage her’ but made Daisy’s reading improve in leaps and bounds); if Nat was filling in paperwork, Daisy had to write reports too (which at least encouraged her to practice writing, and Maria conned her into practising spelling too by emphasising how important accuracy was to agents); if Nat was calculating the supplies she and Clint would need, Daisy had to do some maths too; if Nat was helping test some new Sci-tech toy, Daisy had to experiment too (mercifully, one or other of the scientists usually distracted Daisy with a (reasonably) kid-friendly experiment and a mini-science lesson. Daisy had particularly enjoyed learning about the water cycle.) and so on. No matter what Nat did or said, Daisy wanted to train to be an agent.

And it apparently didn’t change when she and Clint were on an op. Whenever she got back Daisy chattered at her about how she was ‘getting super good at using the computer’ and ‘playing agent with grandpa!’. ‘Playing agent’ seemed to involve many things, but at least seemed to be educational (Parenting books seemed to suggest that ‘educational’ was the goal every activity should aim for). Daisy played at ‘spying’ (sneaking around the office), ‘code-breaking’ (with a little book and scrunched up nose), ‘messenger into enemy territory’ (luckily for Fury, Nat never found out that Fury sent Daisy back and forth between his and Maria’s offices with classified documents), ‘distraction and trickery’ (card tricks), ‘memory exercises’ (match two games) and a collection of other things.

But even playing agent with Fury couldn’t distract Daisy when Agent Romanoff (aka Mama) was around. To both Nat and Clint’s deep amusement, and Fury’s indignation, Daisy wanted to ‘do proper training with proper agents!’, of which Fury was apparently not one (neither Phil nor Maria qualified either because they were ‘desk agents’ and that was ‘boring’). Daisy wanted to mimic whatever Nat (and sometimes Clint) was doing, whenever possible. Which brought them here, four months after Daisy’s birthday, frozen in a kind of horrified silence as everyone realised what Daisy had just said and what it implied.

They’d been unpacking mission bags. They’d just gotten back from an op and Phil had made food so they’d all eaten in the break room, and then Maria had wanted the documents they’d stolen on the op, and they’d had to unpack the bags to get to them (Nat had shoved the file in her bag and just dumped everything else on top, keen to wrap the op up and get back to the helicarrier after three days away). And then Daisy had found the handcuffs Nat set aside trying to get to the documents and everything had suddenly gone downhill at the speed of an Olympic skier.

“Can I keep these? I wanna sleep like Mama!”

Two seconds earlier, Phil had been arguing with Clint about the benefits of acid spraying arrows, and Maria and Fury (it was one of those rare evenings when he managed to snatch time to join them for a meal) had been discussing the recent op and what the next steps to deal with the growing terror group should be. And then Daisy had spoken, her voice excited and carrying, and the whole room had fallen silent.

Clint glanced frantically between Daisy, Natasha and their superiors, horrified because he knew how Nat felt about the fact that she still needed the cuffs. Daisy froze, knowing from the reaction that she’d just said something she shouldn’t have, but not knowing why. Phil, Maria and Fury looked at Nat with a mix of confusion, worry, horror and slow-dawning pity. Nat herself just stood there feeling like she’d just been punched in the throat.

She hadn’t seen this coming. Natasha saw most things coming, usually a mile away. Daisy was her daughter, and Nat knew her better than anyone did. Knew her curiosity, knew her continuing insatiable desire to be just like Nat (there had even been an _incident_ with a bucket of red paint and Daisy’s hair a couple of months ago). She should have seen this coming. She’d known for ages that she’d stopped waking up whenever Daisy stirred in the night, known she didn’t always wake if Daisy left her bed. But somehow, she hadn’t even thought of the fact that Daisy might have seen her using handcuffs to sleep, it hadn’t even crossed her mind. She should have seen it coming.

But she hadn’t. She hadn’t and now she was standing there, frozen at the idea that her daughter knew she chained herself up at night. Of the fact that Daisy thought it was _fun,_ that it was _cool_. And she should be trying to work out what she was going to tell her superiors but all she could think about was that Daisy knew. A tangled mix of shame and horror and guilt was bubbling up inside her, but Daisy’s face was crumpling and Nat knew she had to snap out of it. She shoved her feelings aside, shoved them down and pretended.

“It’s ok Pauchok, you didn’t say anything wrong.”

“B-but everyone st-stopped.” Daisy said, voice warning she was close to tears. Nat wrapped her arms around her daughter and said soothingly “They were just surprised.”

“Oh, was it a secret?” Daisy asked in a small voice.

“It was a bit of a secret” Nat admitted (it was a lot of a secret), “but you didn’t know that, and you didn’t say anything wrong.”

“Really?”

“Really Pauchok” Nat said firmly. “But maybe you could go help Clint put all our gear away now so I can have a chat with grandpa, auntie Maria and uncle Phil? Can you do that Agent Daisy?” She hated encouraging her Pauchok in her agent game, but she really, really needed her daughter not to be around for the conversation that was coming. _Natasha_ didn’t want to be around for the conversation that was coming.

Daisy fell for it, chin lifting and little spine straightening as she’d seen so many agents do “Yes Agent Mama!”

Nat melted a little at the name (she’d melted a lot at the name the first time, connected to the agent game or not) as always, but something still tightened painfully in her gut as her Pauchok grabbed one of the bags and hefted it. Clint grabbed the rest, raising an eyebrow at Nat as he did. _Are you ok?_ Nat didn’t reply, which was an answer in itself, but Clint’s eyes flickered to Daisy and he reluctantly followed her wish to take Daisy out.

Nat slowly turned to face Maria, Phil and Fury. Their faces held a mix of worry, horror and pity, and Nat _hated_ it. Usually they were so good about not pitying her. “I don’t want to talk about it.” she snapped, before anyone else could talk.

It didn’t work. She hadn’t really expected it to. “Director Carter’s file on the red-room said they used to chain their students to the beds...” Phil said slowly, questioningly.

“They still do obviously.” Nat said, voice blank.

“Nat...” Phil said, his voice so achingly sad that Nat couldn’t deal with it.

“ **Don’t.** ” she said, voice suddenly so harsh that Phil flinched and Nat somehow felt worse. She dared a glance up to find Phil looking guilty, and Fury looking like his name, jaw clenched with anger that Nat knew wasn’t directed at her but still made her feel penned in and trapped.

“I’m going to go hit something.” Maria said, suddenly and loudly “Want to come Nat?”

“With pleasure” Nat said, unable to hide the relief in her voice as she half bolted out of the room, Maria following quickly behind her. Maria hated talking about things almost as much as Nat did, and on the few occasions she did make Nat talk, it was in a blunt way that allowed both of them to cope with things. And she’d stopped looking at Nat with anything resembling pity.

So they went to the little gym that only Nat and Clint and occasionally Phil or Maria (and Daisy) really used, and for a while they didn’t talk at all, just warmed up and then beat up the punch bags for a bit. Then they sparred, feet bare and blood pumping. Nat and Maria hadn’t sparred for ages, and it was challenging and good. They both drank greedily from bottles of water when they were done, and Nat hoped that would be it, but Maria tugged her down to lie on the mats. Nat stared up at the white roof of the gym and reluctantly started the conversation.

“Handcuffs were for base. We were never given them on training missions, and later I was taught never to use them outside KGB bases. Handcuffs mean it’s safe to sleep. Sometimes I still can’t switch off without them.” It’s more than Nat wants to say, but she hopes if she says it all at once Maria won’t push further. The truth is it’s more often than sometimes. The truth is she’d been doing really well, had reached the point of rarely giving in to using them, until they’d gone to Hunan. And then she’d started dreaming of that other version (the _real_ but couldn’t be real version) of Hunan, started dreaming of a reality in which Daisy was dead night after night. Now she was back to using them almost every night.

“And you’re ok with this?” Maria asked, and Nat mentally cursed how perceptive her friend could be sometimes.

“I wasn’t given the option not to be ok with it.” she said, purposely misunderstanding.

“Now.” Maria pressed “Are you ok with it now?”

Nat gritted her jaw. Blunt was maybe the easiest way to get through this conversation but it was still unpleasant. She didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want to talk about how weak it made her feel, how ashamed she felt at the thought that Daisy knew, how sick it made her that the red-room still owned this part of her.

“Nat...”

“Of course I’m not ok with it!” she snapped.

Maria was silent for a while, then she said. “My father used to lock me in cupboards when I got in the way. They were always pitch black. I slept with a night-light until I joined the army.”

Nat blinked, the only surprise she let show outwardly. She hadn’t expected Maria to share anything of her past. Maria avoided talking about her father as hard as Nat avoided talking about the red-room. She understood the unspoken message. _I know this is shit. I’m sorry._

“Your father was an asshole.” Nat said.

“The red-room agents were worse.”

Nat didn’t dispute it. She wasn’t wrong. “It feels like they still own me in some way” she admitted.

“They don’t” Maria said.

“I know.”

“Do you want to stop?” Maria asked

“Yes” Nat replied, the word blunt and masking the depth of her feelings on the topic.

“Is Clint helping?”

“He’s trying.” He was trying, Clint knew better than anyone how badly Natasha was sleeping, and at least a couple of times a week Clint would crawl into bed and hold her wrist as they slept. But they didn’t want Daisy to think that was normal, even if it was for them, and on the nights when she was getting enough sleep to function she slept alone, and sooner or later she tended to give in to the almost-physical urge to raise her left arm up and cuff herself.

“Ok” Maria said. “If you need to nap in my office to get some extra sleep I’ll keep watch” she offered. She could hear in Maria’s voice she wanted to be able to say more, wanted to be able to help more. But she couldn’t, and they both knew it.

“Thank you.” Nat said. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that.” She said, and she thought that she maybe meant it.

“Want to spar again?”

“Hell yes” Nat said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to end a fluffy chapter with angst!
> 
> Comments make me very happy :-)


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for mentions of child abuse and killing of a child (red room) at the beginning of this chapter. Please don't read if this is going to upset you. I've marked where to start reading in bold, and put a summary just before it.

She tried again that night, making a short chain of elastic bands and securing one end around her wrist and the other half way down the bed frame. A dozen times her hand reaches up and is pulled back down, and she lies sleeplessly in bed for hours before finally dropping into an uneasy sleep. She sleeps lightly but blessedly dreamlessly for a few hours until suddenly she’s dreaming.

She dreams of the red-room. Dreams of small bodies all around her and tired, tired limbs. Dreams of harsh metal chaffing her still unscarred wrist. Dreams of aching muscles and an empty stomach and shivering under a thin blanket, arm pulled up where the scant warmth couldn’t reach. Dreams of silent protest she already knows better than to give voice. She turns her head and the small body on the next bed looks back at her.

It’s Daisy.

Daisy pale and tired, a black bruise on her cheek, hand stretched awkwardly above her.

Daisy in a red-room bed.

Even sleeping, something cries out in Natasha and her mind flings itself away.

She is still in the red-room. Her wrist is scarred now, she can see them where her sleeve has pulled back from her extended arm. The gun is heavy in her hand, and she wants to get it over with but she still hasn’t pulled the trigger. Natalia is ten, and she’s never killed anyone.

The man in front of her is a traitor, Madame B told her so. She has been honoured to be selected to perform this task for the motherland. She is the first of the girls to be honoured so. She is the strongest of the girls Madame B says. She must pull the trigger or she will be punished. This man is a traitor to the motherland, he deserves his death and Natalia knows her hesitance is weakness. Natalia is not weak. She is marble. She squeezes the trigger and the gun recoils in her hand. The bullet finds its mark perfectly, and the man is still. She is marble. She lowers the gun and places it back on the table. Madame B nods at her, and Natalia knows she will be rewarded.

Natasha knows the man did not deserve his death. May not even have been a traitor. May have merely been unlucky. She flinches from the memory and it fades around her.

She is young again. Not a child, she was never a child, but young. Six and seven year old bodies spin and twirl around her, and she does the same. Her body is past exhausted, past pain. Her feet trace patterns on the floor with her own blood and her muscles scream in relentless agony. She repeats the movement. She must be marble. She must be marble. Infront of her a dancer falls, but Natalia ignores it. She will be made to get up. They always are. Natalia must not fall. She must be marble. She must not fall.

“Again” the instructor says, and Natalia obeys. The bodies around her obey. All but one.

“Again” Natalia repeats it. She tells herself she is marble, she tells herself she is numb. Pain is only a sensation. She is marble.

“Again” She sees the gun out of the corner of her eye. Sees it fully as she spins.

“Again” Natalia begins to spin againbut her eyes fall on the dancer on the floor, and she stops. The gun is already aiming, trigger already squeezing, and Natasha lunges forward, a scream ripping from her throat, but it is too late.

The dancer is Daisy.

Daisy in a white ballet frock. Daisy in blood-stained pointe shoes. Daisy with a face chalk white with exhaustion. Daisy on her knees, half trying to rise.

Daisy collapsing to the floor. Daisy with blood spreading across her chest. Daisy with eyes fluttering shut, silent even in death.

Daisy whose pulse goes still beneath Natasha’s blood stained fingers.

Natasha’s mind flings herself away with such brutal force her body physically surges forward. The elastic around her wrist snaps, recoiling against her skin and leaving a welt she doesn’t even feel. For a moment the world is blurred disorientation and then Nat is surging out of her bunk, across the corridor and into Clint’s. Her partner leaps out of bed in alarm, knife in hand, but she is already vanishing into the bathroom, emptying her guts into the toilet. Clint appears behind her, one hand gathering her hair, the other rubbing her back. But Nat can still see her daughter’s small body crumpled on a blood-stained floor and she jerks forward, puking again, and again, and again until there is nothing to puke up and the stomach acid burns her throat and she finally manages to stop. Clint hands her a wad of toilet paper, and she wipes her mouth, then accepts the glass of water he hands her next. She washes her mouth out and spits into the toilet, then drinks a couple of mouthfuls, trying to get her ragged breathing under control.

Clint sits on the floor next to her, squeezes her shaking hand in his still one.

“What did you dream?”

Natasha tells him, the words pouring out of her in a horrified flow as she tries to purge the images from her mind. The body in the bed next to her. _I wanna sleep like Mama_. The gun in her hand and the press of the trigger. _Like Mama._ The memory of the dancing, of the dancer who fell, who didn’t get up.

Daisy Romanoff was her daughter. She had good genes. The red room knew she existed. There was no way they didn’t by now.

Natasha almost puked again at the thought. The youngest girls in the red-room had been four or five. About the age Daisy was now. The thought of her daughter in that place makes her whole body clench up with crippling fear. She can’t get the image of her baby girl’s body out of her mind. Of Daisy, arm stretched above her head and harsh metal enclosing a delicate wrist. Of Daisy, body broken on the floor.

Her words tumble over each other, barely making sense but Clint gets enough. He pulls her tightly to him, wraps his arms around her as though he can hold her physically together. He strokes her hair and rocks her and tells her truths. That Daisy was safe. That Daisy was protected. That even if Nat was killed, he and Phil and Maria and Fury would give their lives to protect her. That Daisy would never, never see the red-room. Daisy would never go through what she did. Daisy was safe. Daisy was safe.

[Summary: Nat dreams of the red room, but Daisy is in her dream, and is shot. She wakes up and goes to Clint's bunk where she is sick and then comforted and reassured by Clint.]

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**START READING HERE**

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When morning comes Clint tells Phil they are taking a day off, and Phil takes one look at Nat’s pale face and the trembling she still can’t quite hide, and agrees. They spend the day swimming with Daisy, and then playing computer games (Daisy somehow manage to beat them both twice, and was very very proud, and Nat wondered how much computer games Maria let her play when Nat was on mission). They have hot dogs and hot chocolate for lunch, both restricted, unhealthy, treaty foods for Daisy, but Nat needs the comfort food, needs to see Daisy smile. They go trampolining after lunch, then on the zip-wire, and when night comes Nat tells herself she isn’t afraid.

She gets Daisy ready for bed, refuses to let her hands shake. Dresses Daisy in her fluffy pyjamas and reads her two bedtime stories because its been that kind of a day and Nat can’t say no to her today. She tucks Daisy in and kisses her forehead. “Sweet dreams Pauchok.”

“Mama? Do the night monsters get you too?”

Night monsters. That was a phrase Natasha had learned from Phil. Night monsters only came out at night, and they gobbled up good dreams and gave you nightmares instead. Night monsters were repelled by cuddles and singing. Phil had told Natasha the story, and Nat had told it to Daisy, and night monsters had become their word.

Natasha swallowed, knowing Daisy was smart, and intuitive, and had to know something had happened last night even if she’d slept through the whole thing.

“Sometimes.” All the time.

“Did the night monsters get you last night?”

“Yes” Natasha admitted.

“Do you need cuddles?”

“I always need Daisy cuddles” Nat smiled, and held her arms wide open. Daisy snuggled into them, and peeked up at her.

“Why don’t you scare the night monsters away? You scare mine away! You’re the best scarer!”

Nat gave a slightly watery smile “It’s harder to scare your own monsters away.”

“Oh.” Daisy said sadly, then something flashed across her face. “I’m ready for bed now.” she announced.

She was up to something. She was very obviously up to something.

But that something seemed to involve going to bed which, Nat had to admit, was a new one. “Sweet dreams Pauchok” she said, tucking her in again.

“Sweet dreams Mama” Daisy said, and rolled over. Less than a minute later she was giving off loud, fake snores.

Definitely up to something.

But she was in bed, and she would probably grow tired of fake-snoring soon enough, and if she didn’t Nat would deal with it later. So she went and showered, and put on her own pyjamas, and climbed into bed herself. The elastic bands were still snapped because she hadn’t thought to replace them, so she just lay there, and let her breathing even out in the hope that she will sleep. Even though she isn’t sure she wants to.

She almost sits up when she hears her Pauchok get up and pad the few steps to her bed. She feels the duvet picked up, and the mattress sink a little as Daisy slips in next to her.

“Don’t worry Mama. I’ll scare away the night monsters” Daisy whispers, and it’s all Nat can do to keep her breathing even and not smile.

She has the cutest, sweetest daughter in the whole world.

She falls asleep with Daisy’s warm weight against her side and for the first night in a long, long time, she doesn’t have a single nightmare.

In several months time she will look back and see that it is the turning point where her nightmares finally began to fade a little, and she stops finding herself in the ransacked village in Hunan night after night. And as the months pass, she finally, finally stops craving the cold metal around her wrist.

\------------

Time passes, Daisy gets good enough at simple punches and blocks for Nat to start running simple drills with her, and she and Clint start teaching her simple throws. She is still dying to play in the firing range but Nat is still adamant that guns are not toys and firing ranges are no place for kids. She distracts Daisy by convincing one of the communications agents to give her some computer classes, and the certain lure of coding just outweighs the vague hope that Nat will change her mind if asked again, and Daisy drops it. Her reading in both English and Russian is improving by the day and Nat wonders briefly whether she should be getting Daisy proper schooling lessons.

But both Laura points out that Daisy is learning plenty through play, especially agent play (much to Nat’s despair Daisy’s focus on the game seemed only to be increasing), and getting plenty of exercise. She was happy, healthy, and more than hitting educational milestones, so Nat abandoned the idea without much thought.

Laura also points out that Daisy is well beyond all conventional milestones in terms of both languages and computer skills. The former is the result of Nat and Clint still speaking a different language every day, but the latter shows not just smarts but a specific talent. Daisy picked up the coding needed to draw using Turtle with a speed unnatural to four year olds, and she could navigate the computer confidently. Even Nat, who was far from an expert on the development of children knew that it wasn’t normal for four year olds to be able to do basic programming. The four year old seemed to be absorbing programming languages at the same speed she’d picked up Nat’s tangle of languages as a baby. Every so often Nat would watch as Daisy showed her the latest little bit of programming she’d done with the comms agent, and she’d tell Daisy how proud she was of her.

They reached December, and Daisy started proudly telling everyone how she was four _and a half,_ and is suddenly obsessed with birthdays. Nat, Clint and Daisy, sitting on the mats after a training session (They’d all run laps around the gym and then Nat and Clint had sparred while Daisy drilled punches and blocks in the next mat over.) calculated how many days, hours and seconds it was until Daisy turned five, and when they were done Daisy lay on her back on the mats and whined that that was ‘forever and ever and ever away’. She went around dejected for almost an entire day until she was suddenly excited about something she wouldn’t tell Nat about, and she was definitely up to something and Clint was involved.

Clint is better at hiding things than Daisy is, but Nat is the Black Widow and she’s not blind. Clint and Daisy are up to something. What’s more surprising is that Maria, Phil and Fury are also up to something, and while she and Clint have helped Daisy with dozens of pranks, and Phil has helped her with more than one, Maria and Fury are another story. They are being as discrete as spies can be, which is very discrete, but Nat is the Black Widow and she knows _something_ is up. She throws out her first instinct, which is that they are preparing to turn on her, and her second, that they are planning some elaborate prank (Daisy, Clint and Phil – yes; Maria - very possibly; Fury – no.), but she and Clint get sent back into the field before she can work out what they actually are up to.

The op goes a little wonky in the middle, but not really wonky enough to be called FUBAR, and Clint and Nat mutually decide to omit the part where they lose their mark - because Clint slips on banana peel and knocks them both into the river - from their mission reports. But, unplanned swims or not, the op gets done eventually and they finish with enough time to shower and change clothes before their (delayed) extraction. They take turns watching their prisoner, and walking the perimeter, and everything goes smoothly enough that Phil doesn’t comment on the fact that it had taken them longer than expected.

But then Nat wakes up the next morning to Daisy’s muffled giggles and she is _so up to something_. Daisy says that it’s a secret, but within a couple of questions is visibly cracking, and Nat was pretty sure she was about to spill everything when Clint arrived and rescued her. Clint is much, much better at resisting Nat’s questioning, and to her frustration she could get nothing from her partner all day, except that for some strange reason he was insistent on going to the senior agents break room and seeing if Phil wanted to make them lunch. He also insisted on taking the corridors.

Which was strange.

And suspicious.

_Very_ suspicious.

Nat insisted he entered first, which Clint did, with a roll of his eyes, which meant that either this wasn’t the ambush-with-a-bucket-of-water kind of prank or Clint had taken her paranoia into account and primed it for the second person to enter. There wasn’t really any way to tell, so Nat squared her shoulders and entered, ready for anything.

Or at least, she thought she was. She was ready for water guns, foam, paint, and any number of other pranking props. She was not ready for a table weighed down with Nat’s favourite foods, a banner reading ‘Happy Birthday’ and Clint, Maria, Phil and Fury shouting “Surprise!!!”

Nat blinked, then blinked again as Daisy started bouncing up and down in, now completely released, excitement. “It’s not my birthday.” she observed.

“It could be.” Clint said with a grin.

Nat raised an eyebrow. Shield didn’t know her birthday. _She_ didn’t know her birthday. She routinely put a different birthday on every piece of paperwork that required it, just for kicks. “I don’t have a birthday, I don’t remember it.” she said, a little amused.

“I know, we gave you one.” Maria said, as if assigning someone birthdays was something she did daily. “It was Daisy’s idea.”

Daisy was still bouncing beside her, but this prompted a torrent of words “You didn’t have a birthday and that’s not fair cus birthdays are really really fun so I picked a birthday for you so you could have a party and cake and balloons and I made you a present and” at this point Daisy ran out of air and had to stop.

“Breath Pauchok” Nat reminded her daughter, trying to pretend she wasn’t melting at the sheer level of _adorable_ Daisy was. At the sweetness of this entire thing. At how touched she felt that Daisy, Clint, Phil, Maria and Fury had planned a birthday party for her. Had done it carefully enough that she hadn’t even known they were doing it, which took a _lot_ of care. She looked around the room and could see all her friends’ touches. The clusters of red, black and purple balloons screamed Clint. The origami table napkins were definitely Daisy. The collection of so many of Nat’s favourite foods was definitely Phil’s work. The bowls of chocolate, biscuits and marshmallows by the side ready for smore-making over the hob was Maria’s touch. The Russian sweets could only really have come from Fury. Nat felt a lump form in her throat.  
  


“Thank you” she said, before Daisy could start up again. And she knew her friends heard all the unsaid words.

That night she lay in bed, one hand fiddling with the arrow necklace Clint had seen and bought on the op (somewhere between showering river water out of his hair, walking the perimeter and extraction), and thought that this must be what family felt like. She hadn’t fully realised before that it wasn’t just Daisy’s family, it was hers too. Family.

She had a family.

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She and Clint managed to get time off over Christmas for the first time, and Nat found herself dragged into a collection of Western Christmas traditions and completely Barton Christmas traditions. Nat personally isn’t sure what to think of the decorations, cooking (Which she and Clint make the mistake of interfering with once and only once. Laura it turned out did _not_ appreciate having her salt and sugar swapped.), stockings, snowball fights and dozens of other things, but Daisy loves it. It snows on boxing day (Nat asks why it’s called boxing day but neither Laura nor Clint actually know) and Clint, Laura and Daisy between them show her that snow can be fun, not just cold. They make snow angels and snowmen, and then have an everyone-for-themselves snowball fight until it becomes very obvious who is best and the girls all teamed up against Clint, who somehow still manages to hold his own. Nat had once thought that Christmas on the helicarrier was strange and over the top (mostly because they actually celebrated it, which had been new for Nat), but she rapidly re-evaluated that opinion at the Bartons. She still isn’t sure what to think of Christmas when she leaves, but she thinks she enjoys it. She gives Christmas cards to Clint, Laura, Phil, Maria and Fury and signs them ‘Love Nat’ and pretends it doesn’t mean anything and they are tactful enough not to bring it up. Nat pretends not to notice that Phil still has his card on his desk four months later.

Unfortunately, Christmas is followed by a month long undercover mission, gathering intel for a later strike. Nat misses her family like a constant ache and her nightmares take a turn for the worse again. The first night she is back Nat seriously considers pulling out a pair of handcuffs again but she remembers how hard she fought to stop, to break free of that remnant of the red-room, and she resisted. The next day Maria told her she’d finally done something with the swear jar money (the new swear jar was already a quarter full) and bought Daisy some new books and Nat one on the way back from an op. The book she got Nat was titled ‘How to swear in 50 different languages’ and was delivered with a barely contained smirk and it was so _Maria_ (the snarky part of her she buried in orders and regulations and efficiency) that Nat found herself laughing aloud. She reads it cover to cover before bed that night and falls asleep with an amused smile on her face.

She passes the book to Clint, who passes it to Phil, who passes it back to Maria, who passes it to Fury, and for the next month all five slip words from them into casual conversation, both in private and in public, in a sort of snarky in-joke that they can all get away with only because nobody else knows what they’re saying. Unfortunately, Daisy also wants to know what they’re saying, and letting her learn the words would completely defeat the point of having a swear jar (which was still going for swear words in languages Daisy knew) so they eventually had to stop.

The next two major things that happened both included Daisy. Even Nat admitted that the first was her fault. She’d been investigating (hacking) a mark with Daisy working on a simple programme on her computer (wanting to be doing something as similar as possible to Agent Mama had not worn off in the slightest), and Daisy had asked what she was doing. Nat’s first mistake had been telling her, her second mistake had been agreeing to show her properly. She’d mostly agreed because she didn’t think Daisy would be able to copy it, but it was a fairly simple hack, as far as hacks went, and Daisy unfortunately _could._ She also unfortunately discovered not only was hacking a lot of fun, but she was very good at it. And she then set out to learn all she could about hacking.

Natasha’s third mistake was underestimating Daisy. She wasn’t really in the habit of underestimating people, she wouldn’t be alive if she was, but Daisy was four, and the amount she managed to learn on her own was shocking. But Daisy may have been four years old, but she was not a Romanoff for nothing. Sneaking off from aunt Maria while she was distracted was easy for ‘Agent Daisy’, and she already knew where the communications department was. From there, it was easy to access their break room through the vents, and easy to steal and hide a few books on hacking. Which she was smart enough and advanced enough in her reading to understand.

By the time Nat found out about it, Daisy had fallen in love with hacking and was getting alarmingly good at it. Unfortunately, it was at that point too late to easily stop her daughter from learning hacking; she just didn’t have the heart to forbid something that Daisy so clearly enjoyed and was so clearly gifted in. Not when it wasn’t actively dangerous. She did however ground Daisy for two days over the sneaking around without an adult, and she did lay down two firm ground rules.

The first was no hacking without supervision, especially if it was a new hack. Nat was all too aware of the kinds of things that were on the internet, not to mention the darknet and was under no circumstances letting her daughter access it unsupervised.

The second was don’t get caught.

The incredulous look on Maria’s face when Nat summarised the new rules before going on an op would have been hilarious except the commander was probably right. No matter how much encouraging Daisy to enjoy coding and hacking was distracting her from the agent game (and hopefully from the ambition of actually becoming an agent), allowing her daughter to develop a thoroughly illegal hobby probably wasn’t responsible parenting. Oh well, that was what Phil was for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy Daisy being ridiculously sweet as much as I enjoyed writing it!
> 
> Comments make me really happy :-)


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fury miscalculates and Daisy turns five.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I've been gone for a week again, I've just become really busy again and haven't had as much time to write as I'd like. I'm going to try and get the next chapter up in a shorter time though.

The next major thing that happened was by everybody’s agreement, even Fury and Daisy’s, Fury’s fault. Natasha eventually found that it had started while she and Clint had been on an op, and Daisy and ‘Grandpa’ had been ‘playing agents’. That was later though, the first Nat knew about it was a nervous Clint dropping from the air vent and opening with “I swear it wasn’t me.” which never bodes well.

Nat looked up from the paperwork she was trying to fill out (she’d lost a bet to Clint) and fixed her partner with a glare. Clint didn’t even blink, pretty much immune to her glares at this point, and helped Daisy out of the vent.

“What did you two do?” Nat demanded.

“I pranked the rookies!” Daisy announced, face beaming with a mixture of glee and amusement.

Nat melted a little at her daughter’s excitement, but raised an eyebrow at Clint, who elaborated “She stole some of their keycards.”

“And?” Nat asked, given that sounded pretty tame as far as pranks went.

“From their pockets.” Clint said, then “Without them noticing.” when Nat didn’t seem to be absorbing the significance of this.

“Oh” Nat said, eyes narrowing at her daughter, who suddenly looked a little less pleased with herself.

“Daisy Romanoff, who taught you how to pick pockets?” she demanded.

Daisy shuffled back a bit, hands burrowing into pockets as she avoided eye contact “No-one”

“Do _not_ lie to me!” Nat snapped, shocked. Truth, at least to family, was a iron hard rule. It wasn’t like the rule limiting sugar intake, which could be bent or broken sometimes with only minor consequences, not lying was _important_. Nat needed to know she could trust Daisy, especially given her life could depend on it if something went wrong. Daisy had just graduated from minor to proper trouble.

Daisy physically jumped, face flooding with guilt and a tinge of alarm. Nat winced, and moderated her tone down a few notches as she asked sternly “What is the rule about lying?”

Daisy shuffled her feet “Don’t do it.” she mumbled.

“Because?” she prompted.

“Because it could be dangerous” Daisy admitted, then “Am I in trouble?” her lower lip wobbled a little.

“Yes you are.” Nat said, hiding her reluctance at the words. Daisy needed to learn she mustn’t lie to her. They lived on a _military base_ , there were too many things that Daisy mustn’t ever try to conceal. Just at the moment though Nat felt almost as miserable as Daisy, watching tears well up in her daughter’s eyes.

“C’mere Pauchok” she said, opening her arms, and her daughter ran into them, sniffling. Nat hugged her tightly, stroking her daughters hair with one hand. “Daisy, who taught you to pick pockets?”

A sniffle “ ‘m not s’posed to say”.

Nat felt her stomach twist with worry “I’m telling you that you are supposed to say.”

Another sniffle “B-but he said not to”

“I’m your mama Daisy, what I say comes first, I promise you won’t get into trouble for telling me.”

Daisy paused, weighing this up “Grandpa.” she said finally. Across the room Clint’s jaw dropped, and Nat suspected her own face was reflecting her own shock. Which was rapidly turning into anger.

“Grandpa taught you to pick pockets?” she clarified.

“Yes mama.”

“And he told you not to tell me?” She asked, voice carefully neutral. If Fury was secretly training her daughter in mission skills Nat didn’t _care_ if he was the Director of Shield, she didn’t _care_ what the man had done for them, there would be _blood_.

“He said he prob’ly wasn’t s’posed to teach me, and the game h’d gone too far an’ you’d be mad. Are you mad mama?”

“A little, but not at you Pauchok” she promised. “When did he teach you?”

“When you were away last. We were playing agent, and I was bored.”

Nat breathed out slowly, relief flooding her. Playing agent. At least Fury wasn’t really training Daisy, only encouraging her game. Not that Nat wasn’t _furious_ , the game had officially gone _too far_ , and she hadn’t much liked the game to start with.

“OK, Daisy, next time an adult tells you not to tell something, I want you to tell me straight away, ok? It could be really, really important.”

“Like intel?”

Nat inwardly groaned. The agent game had _definitely_ gone too far. “Sort of” she said, trying not to grit her teeth.

“OK, I promise.”

“Thank you Pauchok. OK, you have an early bedtime and no dessert for the rest of this week for lying to me, understand?”

“Yes mama” Daisy said miserably. Nat tightened her arms around her daughter.

“Good girl. Do you want to go play with uncle Clint for a bit longer?”

“No way! I wanna watch this!” Clint protested. Nat rolled her eyes, but she wouldn’t really mind having backup, so “Would you like to play with uncle Phil for a bit?”

\-------------

Ten minutes later, they were heading towards Fury’s office, both faces grim. Nat, now she knew that Fury wasn’t seriously training her daughter, wasn’t nearly as mad, but she wasn’t going to let _him_ know that. She slid an electronic tool out of her pocket as they reached Fury’s office from the vents, and she shuffled it between the gap between the slats, and pressed a button. There was a small zzzztt sound, and then a crackle, and then swearing as the office’s electrical protection (including the one on the air vent) went down. Nat shoved the vent open before Fury could lock down the office.

“Romanoff” Fury said, as she climbed out and dropped down. He sounded pissed but Nat didn’t care. “Barton. What are you doing?”

She took several stalking steps to his desk, eyes flickering around the office, noting Maria relaxing her hand away from the panic button. Clearly she’d been in a meeting with the director. She took satisfaction in the way Fury’s eye widened and alarm flickered across his face at her stance. Maria started leaning towards the panic button again.

“So, I heard an interesting story from Daisy today.” she began, tone the kind of flat calm that whispered ‘they’ll never hear you scream’. “Something about you teaching my four year old daughter to pick pockets and telling her _not to tell me_.” The calm faded out of her voice as she kept speaking, leaving a deadly softness in its wake. Maria’s briefly stunned look told her that this was the first the deputy director was hearing about this. Good. “Care to tell me why _exactly_ you’ve been teaching my daughter the kind of things rookies learn at the Academy?”

Natasha spotted the instant Fury realised how much trouble he was in. Every visible muscle in his body tightened slightly, but he didn’t reach for his gun, instead folding his hands on his desk in subtle surrender. Maria yanked in a sharp breath, and her hand started moving towards the panic button again.

“Agent Romanoff, I am not training your daughter to be a spy.” Fury said, voice impressively calm for a man purposely not reaching for a weapon when the Black Widow was looming over him radiating deadly intent.

“Nat, we’re not the Red Room.” Maria said, her voice soothing, but with worry underlining it.

Luckily for Fury, Nat already knew that, otherwise they might have been having a far less pleasant conversation. Unluckily for Fury, she was still furious. She ignored Maria, smiling viciously at Fury. “Then what _precisely_ where you doing?”

“Babysitting?” Fury said, his tone not _quite_ confident enough to stop the word sounding like a question.

“By teaching a four year old to pick pockets? That sounds very responsible.” Natasha said, sarcastically.

Fury visibly winced “She’s got light hands, people should be allowed to practice the things they’re good at!” he tried.

Nat didn’t let the surprised glee she felt show on her face. Had he really just said that? Hmm, threatening or shouting at Fury would possibly teach him never to do this again, but they all knew she was unlikely to actually go through with the threat, not against Fury. Letting the punishment fit the crime however.... She let the deadly threat she was projecting vanish, subtly altering her body language to appear casual. “Actually, you know what? You’re right. It was nice talking to you. See you later.” and she turned around and walked out of his office, gesturing for Clint to follow, leaving a confused Fury behind.

Behind them, they heard Maria say “You do realise you’ve just given them permission to practice their pranking skills on you? And don’t expect help from me on this, you brought this on yourself!”

The last thing they heard before the soundproofing reactivated was “ _Damn it!_ ”

\-----------------------

And that was how the next big prank war started, although prank war may have been the wrong term. War suggested both sides were on the offensive, war suggested Fury was any good at pranks and getting his own back. War suggested something slightly different to the sustained onslaught of pranks Strike Team Delta plus Daisy played on Fury.

They started mildly, with a fortnight of small irritants designed to drive Fury thoroughly up the wall while they planned bigger things and called in favours. Breaking into his office and leaving chewing gum smiles on his desk, swapping all his pens out for pink gel pens, scattering fine layers of glitter across his chair, fiddling with the levers on the same chair to make it all _slightly_ wrong and a dozen other minor annoyances that were guaranteed to drive anyone insane after a couple of days. Phil wearily requested that Clint and Nat didn’t drive their director to a mental break down. Maria wisely stayed out of it.

Then, they moved onto bigger (although quite possibly actually less annoying) things. Hair dye in a shampoo bottle was an old one, but still good and even Phil admitted (discretely) that it was hilarious watching Fury attempt to maintain his dignity with a green beard. They then replaced every single non-essential item in Fury’s office with a version along a pirate theme this included pens (quills), cups (tankards), paintings, name plates (‘Captain Eyepatch’), curtains (porthole prints), all stashed food (replaced with ‘rum’ and ‘biscuits’), all shield eagle symbols (swapped for the Jolly Roger) and even a rug with an alligator with a ticking clock in its stomach. To top it all off, Nat managed to break into Fury’s bunk while he slept and steal every single article of clothing he had and replace it with a pirate costume. The prank had taken significant effort, planning and coordination, but the ‘I refuse to admit I’m embarrassed’ look on the Directors face as he walked into his office dressed as Captain Hook made it worth every second.

They gave him a few days break after that (and his clothes back), and then started again with Daisy’s idea of filling 45 glasses and mugs with water, carefully covering them with plastic sheeting, turning them over and sliding the sheeting away. They’d also left a hidden camera in his office (to be more accurate, Fury hadn’t found it since they’d started – they were making a photo album of pranks and reactions) and the photo of the director’s face was hilarious. Fury had taken one long look at his office, scowled, and gone to work in the senior agents break room. Maria had kept a completely straight face, but her eyes said everything. Fury chose not to react. He got sci-tech to throw together an instant freeze device and dealt with his office the next day. He also, with great relief, got a report from an undercover shield agent that showed the need for a Strike Team Delta level mission.

Fury had the sense, during the two week long op, not to ‘play agent’ with Daisy, despite her pleas. Unfortunately, their return was followed by the the rapid resumption of the prank war. Precisely _how_ the three of them managed to stretch cling-film across the inside of Fury’s bunk doorway he wasn’t sure, but it was remarkably difficult to get torn bits of cling film off your clothes. Precisely how sci-tech managed to create strong, bouncy cling-film, Fury also wasn’t sure, but five days later he spent ten minutes swearing at it and using a pocket knife to cut his way into his room. He decided, two days later, upon entering his office, that he didn’t _want to know_ where Nat or Clint had found an _ostrich_ , or how they’d gotten it onto the _Helicarrier_ , never mind into his _secured_ office. He did however ask them to put it back where they’d found it and ‘I’m not dealing with the paperwork if you get caught’. None of the trio ever told him that Daisy had pick-pocketed his keycard to enable that particular prank, but Nat thought that payback was sweet, justice had been served and the lesson learned, and to Fury’s deep relief, that was the end of the pranks. Fury was just glad that most of the pranks happened behind closed doors (or at least in parts of the Helicarrier only frequented by the highest level agents) and had very little impact on his reputation or authority. He was acutely aware that this was no accident and he may not be so lucky another time. He was also acutely aware that had Natasha trusted him less, he might have found himself severely injured at least for seeming to be, albeit in a tiny way, mimicking the red room.

\---------

Daisy turned 5 in a quiet seaside village in England, for once getting to have the yearly trip actually on her birthday, and enjoying playing it immensely. They built sandcastles, buried Clint in the sand, and swam in the sea, Daisy shrieking with delight at the waves. Nat found that swimming in the sea was distinctly more fun when she hadn’t fallen into it after the plane had blown up, and could swim to shore whenever she wanted. She, Daisy, and Clint spent the best part of two hours wading deeper into the sea, then letting the waves pick Daisy up and wash her backwards (hands held securely by both of course). Then they spent another hour wandering around collecting sea-shells, an activity that was apparently (according to Clint) utterly essential, although Nat couldn’t quite see the reason for having _that many_ seashells. They finished the evening with candles, cake and crisps, and while the day didn’t draw the level of glee that the water park had, Nat thought it was a success. She lay awake that night in their hotel room, watching Daisy sleep, her Teddy that was really a cat tucked against her chest by one arm, and wondered how on _earth_ she’d been so lucky to have someone like Daisy. She thought back to the red room, to the graduation ceremony that had ripped the very last dregs of herself out of her, and wondered for the first time in a while how Daisy had even been conceived. The thought that her little girl might never have been born made her chest feel tight with panic, and she shoved it away before she could go far down that path. Daisy _had_ been born, and what ifs were foolish. Somehow, despite everything she’d done, despite the red staining her ledger, despite everything, she’d been blessed with the most amazing daughter in the world, and she wasn’t going to question it.

\---------------

Most of a month later, Nat found herself sprinting through the jungle away from darts and cursing her and Clint’s knack for being on the missions that go wildly wrong. Although, really, it’s not luck and more that she and Clint are the go to agents for ops that look a little sketchy and don’t come with nearly enough intel. That wasn’t really much consolation for the fact that she and Clint were currently sprinting through the Amazonian rainforests being chased by a drug operation that apparently lived among the trees growing and collecting drugs and who were distinctly not welcoming to strangers. They fortunately didn’t have much in the way of firearms, but their poisoned darts still posed a significant risk. There were also, unfortunately, rather more of them than they could handle. On the slightly brighter side, the gang had done their job of killing the three men they’d been chasing for them. They had also unfortunately taken all the hard drives the men were carrying back to their camp, which was the other part of the mission. And which led to her and Clint running away, in conditions that were far, far too hot and humid for this kind of activity, having just robbed a very territorial gang and alerted them to the fact that they had, once again, been found. Finally, Clint aimed an arrow upwards and nailed the branches a family of monkeys were hiding in, triggering a wave of monkey outrage, and a hail of fruit seconds after they passed, delaying the men just enough for them to escape without really hurting anyone. The mission report Nat dumped on Coulson’s desk 7 hours later (after a 5 hour flight and no less than three cold showers) was one she’d never, in her wildest imagination, thought she’d write. Coulson said that ‘at least it wasn’t baby crocodiles’ and Nat decided she was too tired to ask. Daisy thought the entire story (sanitised somewhat to remove the murder of three men) was hysterical, and announced she didn’t want a dog she wanted a monkey. Nat thought of what Maria’s face would look like if she introduced a monkey to the Helicarrier and laughed so hard she cried.

The rainforests mission was followed by no less than seven almost back to back emergencies, and strike team delta spent the next two weeks in a state of almost constant sleep deprivation, punctuated by periods of exploding adrenaline and rapid action. By the time the last one was dealt with, they were both tired enough that they almost crashed the quinjet flying back because they both fell asleep at the controls. They only woke when the plane hit some serious turbulence, auto-pilot failed and alarms blasted through the jet. Coulson still looked a little pale when they finally landed on the Helicarrier, and sent them both to bed without even bothering with debrief. They both slept the clock round, debriefed, and then went back to sleep. Neither were awake enough to care why Coulson was trying not to laugh through the whole thing and so didn’t realise until the second time they woke that Daisy had given them both glasses and moustaches in bright purple marker. She was too happy to see her daughter properly to really care, which said something rather sad about the last two weeks.

Nat spent the entire day with just her daughter, letting Daisy convince her into teaching her how to do a cartwheel, and then a front flip, and then a back flip. When Daisy finally ran out of energy, they lay on their backs on the gym floor, looking up at the ceiling. Just as Nat thought Daisy had fallen asleep, Daisy asked “Mama? Did your mama teach you to do this?”

Oh dear. “No Pauchok, a teacher taught me to do it.”

“Oh. Mama?”

“Yes?” Nat asked, hoping desperately that Daisy wasn’t going to ask about the teacher.

“If Grandpa isn’t your daddy, who is?”

Well, at least she wasn’t asking about the red room. “I don’t remember my parents sweetie, I um, I lost them when I was very young.”

“You didn’t even have a mama?!?” Daisy asked, childish horror in her voice. Nat cringed, desperately trying to think of a way to redirect the conversation without outright lying to her daughter.

“I don’t need a mama, I have you. And Clint and Phil and Maria and Fury. You’re my family.” she said, throat thickening a little at the thought of how true that was.

“But didn’t you want a mama? When you were little like me?”

Nat thought of when she’d been five herself, of her memories of training in the Bolshoi that had almost certainly never happened, and of far more blurry memories of narrow beds, handcuffs and endless training. She couldn’t remember enough to know if she’d missed her family, if she’d even had one to miss.

“I don’t remember” she said, and it was the truth. “What would you like for supper?” she asked, a blatant subject change, but Daisy was still just young enough to distract that way. Daisy instantly started listing ideas, jumping from one things she’d like to another, and Nat let herself relax again. Someday, Daisy would be too old to be distracted from those awkward questions, but that day wasn’t yet, and she would find a way to deal with it when it came.

\---------------

August brought with it a fresh determination on Daisy’s part to master everything agent related. No matter what activities Nat suggested, if it couldn’t be described as training, Daisy wasn’t interested. Nat made significant attempts to wind the game down in preparation for banning it, but nothing seemed to work. Her determination not to teach Daisy anything more about combat or hacking or anything else irresponsible were thoroughly foiled by the fact that, quite apart from everything else, Daisy was very, very convincing. She was cute, and she knew it, and used the fact ruthlessly. Nat (although she would never, ever admit it) was rather impressed with the way Daisy used her age and cuteness to her advantage, much as Nat used her looks and small stature to make people underestimate her in the field. Unfortunately, Daisy was using it to convince the junior agents to teach her more combat skills, or give her little coding lessons, or on one very memorable occasion, teach her how to hack a bank (Nat gave that particular poor agent a lecture that would have made Maria proud, and then threatened him with severe bodily harm if he ever taught Daisy anything ever again, and then she grounded Daisy for a week.). Finally, in desperation, Nat managed to convince Daisy that really good agents needed really broad pools of general knowledge, which at least convinced her to leave the gyms alone and focus on learning to read and write properly (although in exchange, Nat had to start teaching her to read and write in Mandarin as well as English and Russian), and on maths skills (still focused on things like ‘if there are five agents and twenty ration packs, how many packs does each agent have to carry), and some basic science, and of course computer science (Daisy was still learning how to code at a frankly terrifying speed). Nat puts on collections of kids shows carefully selected to present other options for jobs, although with little success. Neither ‘Postman Pat’ nor ‘Bob the Builder’ or ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ succeed in making Daisy want to be a postman, builder or train driver. ‘Fireman Sam’ (which came with the collection of box set otherwise Nat wouldn’t have bought it) gets an interested “That looks _fun_ ” and Nat finds herself dropping out of the vents to ask Phil despairingly if an utter disrespect for danger could be a genetic trait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Nat!
> 
> Comments make me very happy (literally, I treasure them all)!


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this didn't actually go up in less than a week (and was actually 2 weeks). Real life and my mental health is sucking all my time, energy and sanity right now. I'm afraid I'm putting this on hiatus again. It's definitely going to be finished - I love this story too much to abandon it and I've mapped out the rest of the plot. But I just can't find time and energy to write on top of everything at the moment. I'm sorry, especially to those people who've been following this for a while. Your comments and kudos have meant so much to me and really been a bright spot in my days. I'm still going to be writing when I do get time, and hopefully this won't be on hiatus for too long. Just until work and life settle down again.

Towards the end of August Coulson went off on one of his occasional field missions, shortly before Clint and Nat get sent on one of their own. They both miss Coulson’s steady voice on their comms and the agent assigned to give them back end instead is an idiot, but they are too well trained to whine and they get the job done, despite the fact that the op went the way of most ops (well, most of the ones Strike Team Delta got sent to deal with anyway) and went wonky down the middle. They defuse all five bombs though, and catch all the terrorists in the small cell and bring them all back to shield for interrogation without gaining much more than a few cracked ribs, a minor bullet graze and a concussion between them, so they call it a success. Maria, with weary familiarity, doesn’t even attempt to make them go to medical, just tells them to stitch themselves up and take a shower before collecting Daisy, and not to train for a week on pain of extra paperwork.

Two days later Nat is supervising and directing the junior agents (three of whom have reached level four and aren’t really junior agents anymore, but Nat still thinks of them as the rookies brave enough to start a prank war against Black Widow and Hawkeye) in a sparring exercise Daisy is valiantly trying to mimic when Maria’s voice comes through the comm and Nat feels her stomach turn to ice. Clint is already bolting for the gym doors before she unfreezes, and turns to the junior agent she knows best (which isn’t that well at all). “You’re babysitting Daisy. Don’t feed her sugar or do anything dangerous or I will _hunt you down_.” and then bolts towards the door after her partner, ignoring the shouts of “What’s happening?” behind her.

She and Clint make it to medical in record time, only knocking down a few agents on the way, and skid to a halt beside Maria, her face pale and her hands clasped just a little too tight behind her back.

“Is he ok?”

“Can we see him?”

Maria swallowed, trying to speak as calmly as possible “No and no, he’s in surgery. He’s been shot in the lungs, and he’s lost a lot of blood, but he’s tough. He’s, he’s going to get better.” the tiny crack in Maria’s voice on the last word was telling, and Nat felt like the floor was falling away from her feet.

It wasn’t supposed to be Phil, it was _never_ supposed to be Phil. Clint, she was prepared for Clint to get hurt, Clint _frequently_ got hurt, and she knew it was only a matter of time before one of them got hurt seriously, but Phil? Phil didn’t go on the kind of ‘fly in, work it out and try not to die’ ops they went on. Phil was cautious and careful and wasn’t even in the field 4 days out of 5. Nat had never expected it to be Phil in surgery. She had never expected it to be Phil she was pacing around like a caged animal waiting for information on.

She remembered, with a sudden frightening clearness, looking down with a blank face at the body of another red room girl. They’d been partnered together for their first missions, they’d worked together and helped each other. They’d almost been friends. And another girl had broken her neck in sparring. She’d promised herself then to never care about anyone again. Love was for children, and at 12, she knew she hadn’t been a child for years. Love made her weak.

This felt a hundred times worse.

Two hours into their vigil by the closed operating room doors Melinda May turned up, still in combat gear and smelling of smoke, and dropped into a seat next to her, Clint and Maria. None of them spoke. Fury had to call Maria away an hour after that, and two hours later was still gone. May had fallen asleep against the wall, crippling worry eventually overcome by utter exhaustion, and Nat wondered how long the other agent had been on mission before she got the news. By the sixth hour Nat thinks she might be sick with worry, and Clint is so tense beside her she’s amazed he hasn’t punched anything yet.

All three of them startle badly when the door finally opens, and a doctor steps out. He doesn’t look that surprised to see them, and he doesn’t wait to be asked.

“He’s out of surgery, and he’s currently stable. He’s lost a lot of blood, and taken a lot of lung damage, but his chances of making it are good.”

_His chances of making it are good._ Not certain. Not his chances of a full recovery. Of making it.

“Thank you.” Natasha hears herself say. “Can we see him?” she asks, because May has only just woken and doesn’t seem to be processing and Clint’s jaw is locked so tight Nat doesn’t think he can speak.

“He’s not awake yet, but you can see him briefly. Then you should go get some rest. You’re no good to him if you make yourselves ill.”

None of them dignify that with a response, they just follow the bed as it’s wheeled out of the operating theatre and into a private room, then they sit around it for a while, none of them speaking. Nat looks down at the pale body of her handler and friend and thinks that maybe the red room was right, maybe love is weakness. Because the sight of Phil Coulson pale, unconscious, and hooked up to so many machines is undoing her.

The doctor tries to kick them all out after ten minutes, and Nat wants to protest but she knows she needs to go and find Daisy so she lets herself be kicked out. Clint still doesn’t seem to be managing words but he gives the doctor a look of such threat that he gulps and backs away. May doesn’t even twitch in her chair, still staring at the body of her best friend. Nat tells herself Coulson is in good hands and leaves to find Daisy.

The helicarrier is quiet, night (or what was defined as night by helicarrier time, which blithely ignored whatever time zone they were currently in) having arrived hours ago, and Nat doesn’t have much trouble convincing the night shift techies to let her access the security footage to find Daisy. The not-so-junior agent she left in charge of Daisy and another couple of the junior agents are in their common room with her, and Nat heads off as soon as the computer tells her where. She gets there to find Daisy asleep on a couch, head resting on one of the cushions and covered with a blanket someone had found from somewhere. The three agents are talking very quietly at a table a few metres away, casting frequent glances back at Daisy, and around the room, and Nat feels a surge of relief at their protectiveness. It’s been years since she was so viciously protective as to allow only a few people anywhere near her Pauchok, but suddenly asking one of the junior agents, who she’s spent a lot of time training (and pranking) but doesn’t know _that_ well, to babysit was a lot, even in the initial waves of panic from Maria’s message.

The agent stands up when she sees Nat approaching, his friends falling silent. “Thank you.” Nat says, trying to hide the way exhaustion weighed upon her like a millstone.

“I gave her hot dogs from the canteen and some fruit for supper, and she fell asleep around 9. We told her something big had happened that needed your attention, but that we’d have heard if something really bad happened, but I think she’s still a little worried.”

Nat nodded, that was unavoidable “Thank you for looking after her. If you ever need a favour, or anything, let me know ok?”

“Thanks, I’ll remember that. If I can ask though, what happened?”

Nat swallowed hard, but he’d more than earned the right to know what had happened “Agent Coulson got shot on mission.” she said, voice a little rough.

“I’m sorry.” he offered, his and his friends faces falling. Coulson was well known and well liked.

Nat smiled wanly “The doctors said his chances of making it are good.” she said, the words tasting bitter with fear. “I’d better take her to bed” she said, gesturing at Daisy before they could ask any questions she couldn’t answer. “Thank you again.”

\---------------

Morning came far too soon, Daisy waking early despite falling asleep late and stirring a little when Nat had carried her to bed. She climbed out of bed and went to peer at her Mama, wondering if she was awake, which of course had the effect of waking Nat up. She snapped to consciousness with a feeling of tiredness and like there was something very heavy in her lungs. There was a second in which she couldn’t remember what had happened, and then it all came flooding back with a wave of dread. Coulson. _Chances of making it are good_. She swallowed hard.

“Good morning Pauchok.”

“Mama?”

“Yes?”

“What happened yesterday?”

Nat swallowed again, sitting up in bed and patting the spot next to her as she reluctantly worked out what to tell her daughter. She couldn’t not tell her anything, but how could she tell her 5 year old how hurt her uncle really was.

“Pauchok, you know Uncle Phil has been away for a few days?”

“Uh-huh. He’s been on mission, being a real agent!”

“Uncle Phil is always a real agent, he’s just not a field agent most of the time.”

“Oh, did you havta go an’ help him? ‘Cus he’s not a field agent and he’s outta practice?”

Nat took a deep breath, letting herself delay for just a moment before she said “No Pauchok, we didn’t go help Uncle Phil on his mission, there wasn’t time for that. Something did go wrong though, and Uncle Phil’s been hurt, so Clint and I went to wait for him while the doctors made him better.”

“Oh” Daisy said in a small voice “Does he havta stay in bed for ages and ages like you and Uncle Clint sometimes havta?”

“Yes, I think he will have to.” Nat said.

“Can I bring him my colouring book? So he has something to do?”

“I think he’d like that.” Nat said, voice tight.

“Now?”

“How about we get dressed first? And have some breakfast?”

Daisy looked down at herself “I’m already dressed!!!”

Nat felt her lips twitch “Those are yesterday’s clothes. How about we find you something clean to wear?”

“These are clean! I didn’t drop _anything_ down them!” Daisy said proudly.

Nat swallowed her laugh “Well done sweetheart, I’m proud of you! But you did spend two hours playing in the gym, so they’re not totally clean.”

“I didn’t get dirty in the gym! It’s only dirty if you can _see_ dirt!”

Nat really did laugh at that logic “Not all dirt is visible, like what you learned about in science last week, do you remember what it’s called?”

“Bac-ter-ria. Because if you have the wrong kinds you have to go _back_ to bed and cry lotsa _tears_ until aunty _Ria_ comes to read a story and cheer you up!”

“Exactly” Nat said, smirking a little at the memory of Maria’s exasperated face when she’d heard that one. “So just because your clothes don’t _look_ dirty doesn’t mean there isn’t really really little bits of dirt on them.”

“Ok, I’ll get changed” Daisy said, apparently accepting the logic of this.

Nat helped her wriggle off the bed and then opened her clothes drawer to find something clean of her own to wear. She waited until she was sure Daisy was properly distracted deciding what to wear to grab her phone and send Clint a text.

_Any news on Coulson?_

She didn’t get a reply, which hopefully meant Clint was asleep, and sent the same text to Maria, getting a message back barely thirty seconds later.

_Still unconscious. Mostly stable._

_Thanks, I’m bringing Daisy to visit in half an hour._

_Ok. Clint’s still here, he fell asleep in the chair._

_I’ll bring you both some breakfast._

_Bring coffee, everything else is secondary._

_Noted._

Nat did bring coffee, stealing five Thermos flasks of the stuff along with several boxes of pancakes, bacon and maple syrup which the resigned kitchen staff handed her with ‘please get out of our kitchen’ looks. They walked into medical the normal way (for most agents, the normal way for Nat and Daisy was still the vents, much to Maria and Phil’s continuing frustration), and Nat tried to focus on her daughter’s skipping steps beside her rather than the thought that her handler and friend was hurt.

Seeing Phil in the hospital bed was almost worse the second time round, he was hooked up to less machines this time, but he looked no better. May was still sitting in a chair beside his bed, although she had clearly showered at some point. Clint was asleep in an armchair against the wall, while Maria, face haggard and eyes marked with bags, sat on the other chair by Phil’s bed. Daisy took one look at the hospital bed and jolted to a sudden stop. Nat turned instantly to her daughter to find her eyes wide and face stricken. The stunned look of horror on her Pauchok’s face was so much of what she was feeling inside that for a moment Nat just wanted to drop down on the ground and cry. Then she shoved the desire aside ruthlessly and crouched beside her daughter, placing the bag on the floor to hug Daisy. She didn’t say anything, there wasn’t really anything to say. Not something that could make the beeping machines or Phil’s pale face any better.

“Mama? Why is uncle Phil so pale?”

Nat swallowed, but offered Daisy the truth “He lost a lot of blood, that’s one of the side effects.”

“Oh, ok” Daisy said, voice low and subdued. Nat stayed with her on the floor for a while, and then realised Daisy wasn’t going to want out of the hug anytime soon, and shifted her so she could awkwardly stand with Daisy on one hip. “You’re getting heavy for this” she teased, trying to lighten her Pauchok’s mood. It didn’t get a response and she internally sighed. She retrieved the bag from the floor with some difficulty, and dropped it into Maria’s lap.

“Coffee’s in the Thermos” she said.

Maria shot her a deeply grateful look and proceeded to gulp the liquid down at the speed an athlete might down water after a very long run. Nat tried to find it in herself to be amused, but didn’t quite manage it. She handed another Thermos of coffee to May, and opened another to wave it under Clint’s nose until he stirred with a groan and took the flask off her. She sat in the chair next to him with Daisy on her lap and they shared one of the boxes of pancakes and bacon, trying for Daisy’s sake to act like things weren’t as bad as they were and dismally failing.

It was one of the longest days of Natasha’s life, and that was saying something. Daisy eventually wriggled off her lap, and sprawled on the floor colouring for a while. Maria had to go deal with something shortly after that, and didn’t come back until a couple hours after lunch. Fury visited briefly around lunchtime, bringing food with him, but couldn’t stay long, likely for the same reason Maria was still gone. They ate quickly, making stupid jokes and forcing laughs for Daisy’s sake, but Nat could feel herself crumpling inside. She got Daisy to fall into an uneasy sleep after lunch, and Clint wandered off to call Laura, and returned with red-rimmed eyes that Nat didn’t comment on. Maria returned about ten minutes after Daisy woke, more coffee in one hand and eyes still drooping. Nat considered the likelihood that Maria had slept at all in the last 36 hours and decided it was time to intervene. Maria gave her a dark look when she swiped her coffee and bluntly told her to go to bed, but Nat gave her a decent imitation of Maria’s own unimpressed glare, and Maria rolled her eyes and surrendered.

She took Daisy back to their bunk when evening rolled round and it was clear Phil wasn’t going to wake up. Clint followed her after a moment of miserable indecision, and once Daisy was asleep they went a little way down the hall and sparred until another senior agent came to tell them to go to a gym before they hurt themselves, and they went to bed instead. It wasn’t like there was anyone who could babysit Daisy while they worked out their stress.

When they returned to medical the next morning May was just leaving, jaw set and eyes showing her exhaustion. Nat offered her a weary smile in response and received a nod in return. Maria arrived mid-morning and threw herself into a chair with a laptop and a pile of paperwork as thought the chair had insulted her deeply. Both Nat and Clint were smart enough not to comment.

The day dragged with the same slowness as the day before had, Nat and Clint even taking over Maria’s paperwork after a certain point, which showed almost more than anything else how badly they were shaken. Maria was kind enough not to comment.

Lunch came and went, but Daisy refused to nap afterwards. At five she was rapidly outgrowing naps, and Nat didn’t have the energy to push.

“Mama? Could uncle Phil die?” The questions was so quiet Nat barely heard it, but in the quiet room it was just audible, and she felt the words drive through her heart like a knife. The question she hadn’t asked, the question none of them had dared ask. She felt her breath stutter, and answered a beat too late “No Pauchok, of course not.”, and her voice was steady and she was the B _lack_ _W_ _idow_ and lying was supposed to be second nature, but Daisy’s face was crumpling.

“B-But w-w-we d-don’t lie to each other Mama!” And somehow, Nat managed to feel even worse. Tears burned behind her eyes, and no matter how hard she tried she didn’t seem to be able to push them down.

“Pauchok…” she tried, but Daisy was shaking her head, her whole body shaking, hurt quickly being covered by waves of anger that signalled the rapid arrival of a tantrum.

“NO! YOU SAID WE DON’T LIE! YOU SAID!”

“Daisy, you need to calm down.” Nat said, trying to make her voice stern but it still came out sounding choked and desperate.

“NOOOOOO! YOU LIED!!”

“And she’s in trouble for it too, in fact, she’s going to go to her room right now.” Maria said, her voice matter of fact and confident, sounding, for the first time in two days, like herself. She jerked her chin at the door, gave Nat an ‘I’ve got this’ look, and turned her attention fully onto Daisy. Nat fled, barely making it back to her bunk before the tears started sliding down her face. She collapsed onto her bed, burying her face in the pillow and cried until her throat burned.

When she eventually returned to medical an hour later, she brought coffee and doughnuts with her, a silent thank you for Maria. Daisy was sat huddled in a chair next to Clint, face calmer but still moody. Nat sat down next to her and offered her a doughnut as a peace offering.

“I’m sorry I lied Pauchok.”

“Auntie Maria said you didn’t want to think about uncle Phil dying.” Daisy said, voice revealing a depth of misery and fear that Nat never wanted to hear in her five year olds voice.

“I still shouldn’t have lied to you, I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you” Daisy said, giving Nat the closest approximation to a real smile she’d given in two days. Silence fell for a while as Daisy enjoyed her doughnut and Nat pretended to enjoy hers. Her stomach still felt tied in knots, and her throat was sore from crying, but she ate it anyway.

“Mama?”

“Yes Pauchok?”

“Are you scared too?”

Nat swallowed “Yes sweetheart, I’m scared too.”

\----------------------

Clint called her phone at 4am on the third day, and Nat answered by the second ring, eyes still groggy with sleep.

“He’s awake. Doctor say’s he’s going to be fine.”

“What?”

“Phil! The doctors say he’s going to be fine! He’s going to make a full recovery!”

Clint’s voice was giddy, unlike his usual tone, with high with relief and happiness, and it was this as much as anything else that got through Nat’s tired, overstressed mind.

“Really? A full recovery? That’s, that’s…”

“Yeah.”

By this point in the conversation, Daisy was sitting up in bed, yawning and looking cute enough that Nat was tempted to stop and grab a camera, but resisted the urge in favour of starting to yank on some clothes.

“Uncle Phil’s awake Pauchok! He’s awake!”

“ _Really!!!_ Can we go an’ see him!”

Nat was about to point out that it was 4 AM and Daisy ought to be sleeping, but then she realised she was already getting dressed and she couldn’t very well leave Daisy on her own. She’d just have to deal with the consequences later.

And that was how Nat ended up climbing through the vents to medical at 4 AM in the morning (helicarrier time), followed by her five year old daughter wearing Captain America pyjamas. Phil was not only awake, but looking significantly better than he had ten hours ago, and Nat realised with a rush of relief that the worst was over. It was going to be ok.

It was going to be ok.

Clint was sitting by Phil’s bed, looking a little light-headed with relief and talking about the merits of British sweets over American ones of all things, and Phil was listening with an expression of patient amusement that was so familiar that Nat found herself releasing a half-hysterical laugh. And then May was arriving, and then Maria, and Fury shortly after her, and they were all crowded into Phil’s room in medical talking over each other, and Nat could almost taste the giddy relief in the air.

It was going to be ok.

\--------------

Phil sent them all back to bed eventually (or to bed in the case of Clint), and insisted on it, threatening Clint with paperwork to make him go. It took Nat most of the next hour to get Daisy to settle down in bed, but when she finally fell asleep she didn’t stir until almost midday, much to Nat’s relief.

They spent significant portions of the next couple of weeks in medical with Phil, but stopped spending most hours of the day there, and slowly, as August bled into September, and then towards October, Phil started getting better. By the time Clint and Nat got sent undercover a few days into October, Phil was out of bed and walking around, and even doing brief sessions with a punching bag.

The mission is weird. She and Clint are supposed to be married, her the stay-at-home housewife and he the travelling business man. It’s strangely domestic, and feels wrong in half a dozen different ways, despite the fact that Nat barely sees Clint. They both do their parts of the op, Clint doing recon all over the city while Nat works her way into the social circle of the terrorist ring they’re attempting to take down and gathering Intel from the inside. It’s all going unusually well for a Strike Team Delta mission until Clint stops doing distance recon and they go to a fancy party as husband and wife. The plan is to sneak away from the party and search through a few rooms, but Clint is doing a terrible job acting like they are married instead of best friends, and Nat knows she isn’t on her best game either. ‘Natalie’ sends Clint practised flirtatious glances, and angles her body intimately towards him, but there is a slight second of hesitation behind her smiles as Natasha rises to the surface. And when someone starts giving them openly suspicious looks Nat’s deeply entrenched spy instincts take over, and she raises her lips to Clint’s.

There is a split second in which Clint freezes like a deer in headlights, and then their lips are touching, and Nat’s brain screams ‘I’m kissing my brother, _ewwwwww_ ’ and she pulls back too fast to not be suspicious, but it doesn’t really matter anyway because Clint’s face is screwed up in disgust and she’s pretty sure her own is saying more than she’d like as well, and someone is pulling a gun on her left. Back to throwing the mission plan out the window and fighting their way through it then. So business as usual.

Ten hours later, when they’re done and patched up (Clint has a few nasty bruises and Nat dislocated a shoulder) and back on the helicarrier, they debrief to Coulson who listens to them explain why plan A fall apart with a face that is just a little _too_ straight, but does at least resist the urge to laugh. Unfortunately, he also informs Clint that he’s needed on another op.

“But we were going to go to the farm!” Clint protested, “I already booked the time off and called Laura!”

“It shouldn’t be a long op, half a week at the most.” Coulson offered apologetically, “And they need a good sharpshooter.”

“We can wait a few days to go to the farm” Nat offered, but Clint shook his head resignedly.

“Laura and Daisy will be disappointed, go ahead, I’ll follow you when the op finishes.”

Nat started to nod, and then abruptly remembered their last mission and “But what about the op? We have to tell her what happened.”

It took Clint a moment to work out that Nat was talking about the op that had just finished up, not the one he was about to go on, he shrugged “We were undercover, it’s not like we slept together. Laura will be ok with it.”

Nat was pretty sure that most wives were _not_ ok with some other woman kissing their husband “Well _you_ can tell her what happened then, when you get there.” she said, refusing to admit how much she did _not_ want to be the one to start that conversation. Clint rolled his eyes and nodded at her, and then he was off to prepare for the next op.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this was kind of angsty! I tried to end it on an amusing note (also, I can totally see Clint and Nat doing this on a mission and I think it's hilarious!).
> 
> Comments make me happy :-)


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat has a couple of shocks and doesn't react especially well to either of them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is sort of off hiatus. My mental health is extremely up and down, and I'm only really writing when I have a few good days in a row. But I am writing again. I'm going to aim to post once a week because I think I can manage that, but I can't promise to post every week and I'm not going to put pressure on myself to manage it. I really enjoy writing and seeing what people think of it (thank you to everyone who has commented btw, I treasure them all and sometimes reread them when I'm down or before I start writing), but I don't love it enough to do it when I don't have the energy to spare and it'll make my mental health worse. The plan is to post once a week for now though, probably on Sunday evenings or Monday mornings (UK time). 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter. Lots happens in it. :-)

Laura took the news that Clint wasn’t following for a few days pretty well, only showing a slight resigned disappointment before she swept Daisy into a hug. But there was something off about Laura all evening, that Nat couldn’t quite put her finger on.

It wasn’t anything obvious. She wasn’t treating either Nat or Daisy any differently, pulling them inside and offering them coffee and milk, and putting biscuits out and somehow keeping up with Daisy’s mile-a-minute stream of things that auntie Laura just _had_ to hear about _right now_. She wasn’t acting any differently when she refused Nat’s offer of help with a ‘Thanks Nat, but I think I’d rather you didn’t try to help cook’, or when she shooed them upstairs to get settled into the guest room. But there was something.

It was something in the way Laura looked at Daisy for a moment, something not quite normal on her face. It was something in the way that Laura snacked on a banana when she offered them biscuits, and had another just before she started cooking, and chopped another into her bowl of brownie and ice-cream after supper. It was in the way Laura gave in far too easily to Nat’s insistence that Laura took a break while Nat cleaned up. It was in the way Laura excused herself upstairs and the quiet, distant, but distinct sounds of someone being sick. And Nat was about to run upstairs and make sure Laura was ok when her mind suddenly put it all together and _oh._ _OH._

Laura was pregnant.

There is a strange feeling in Nat’s head like this wasn’t supposed to happen, but it was supposed to happen just not like this. Like she’d known this was going to happen but she it wasn’t supposed to happen so soon. Which was weird, and stupid, because even if she could have predicted this if she’d thought about it, she hadn’t really spent time wondering if Clint and Laura were going to have kids, never mind when. Clint. Clint was going to be a father! Did he know yet? No, he couldn’t possibly know, or he wouldn’t have caved to delaying his leave so easily.

“Mama?” Daisy asked, confusion in her voice, and Nat looked down to find Daisy had finished drying the plate and was waiting for Nat to pass her the next thing. Oh yeah, the washing up.

“Sorry Pauchok, I got distracted.” she said, returning to the job.

“What by Mama?”

“Doesn’t matter sweetheart. Would you like a bath tonight?”

“YES!” Daisy cheered, distracted in an instant. Baths were a rare treat reserved only for while at the farm, due to the simple reason that the helicarrier only had showers.

\---------

Laura went to lie down for a bit after being sick, so it wasn’t until evening, when Daisy was bathed, dried, and put to bed, albeit not asleep yet. Nat headed downstairs anyway, hoping her daughter would fall asleep soon. Laura was sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a mug of tea and eating yet another banana. She flushed when she saw Nat, but didn’t attempt to hide her fourth banana of the day (quite likely more than fourth given they’d arrived mid afternoon), and she was so obviously dealing with cravings that Nat wanted to kick herself for not working it out sooner. And then all she can think about is that Laura is _pregnant_ and Nat kissed Clint and what if she _does_ mind? What if Nat managed to cause a fight between Laura and Clint just when they needed each other most? What if Nat had messed it up for them because of her stupid spy instincts, and what if, what if, what if...

“I kissed Clint.”

The confession tumbled out of her mouth before she could properly think it through, and Laura froze.

“What?” she asked, a little blankly. Laura looked, not exactly worried, just a little thrown.

“I kissed Clint” Nat repeated, and then realised that said all the worst things and none of the reasons “Except not like that. Well, sort of like that, but not really.” she said, realising she was babbling and wishing she could sink through the floor. Since when did she _babble_? She was far, far to well trained to _babble_.

“Nat, are you feeling ok?” Laura asked.

“Um, yes, I’m fine.”

“Right, well, why don’t you start from the beginning. I’m assuming you were undercover?”

“Oh, yeah, we were supposed to be husband and wife, but we weren’t really pulling it off, so I kissed him.”

“Right, and?”

And what? She’d kissed Laura’s husband! What else did she need to know? “And, and I kissed Clint and it was gross and we both pulled faces and then our cover was falling apart and we fought our way out.”

Laura blinked at her, and then her lips started twitching “So, let me get this straight. You and Clint couldn’t pull off being a couple, so you kissed him, and broke cover because kissing your honorary brother was too yucky?”

“Um, that’s about the sum of it yes.” Nat said, and Laura cracked up laughing. “It’s not _funny_!!!” she complained.

“The _Black Widow_ broke her _own_ cover over a _kiss_!” Laura choked, tears beginning to slip down her face, and Nat scowled at her, even if she did, begrudgingly, have to admit it was kind of funny when you looked at it like that. Madame B would have a heart attack if she heard about this.

“You’re not mad then.” she concluded, with some measure of relief as Laura finally started trying to control her laugher.

“Nat, honey, why would I be mad?”

“I kissed your husband.” she pointed out.

Laura shrugged “You were undercover, I know that kind of thing happens. And it’s rather obvious you’re not going to do it again.” she said, breaking into giggles again.

Nat groaned, slouching in her chair as she groaned “I’m never going to live this down am I?”

“Not a chance.” Laura said.

\--------------

Nat spent the next couple of days pretending to be far less observant than she actually was, respecting Laura’s clear desire to tell her husband first. When Clint finally did arrive, looking tired and grumpy but uninjured, Nat took Daisy off for a long walk so that the two of them could catch up. When she returned three hours later, Daisy practically asleep in her arms, Clint was sitting on the couch still wearing an expression of dazed happiness. He was still in that same position, and still talking in awed tones about baby names, when Nat came back downstairs after putting Daisy down for a nap.

“So, can I ask if they’re a boy or girl yet?” she asked casually. Laura looked up from her tea (and banana) with only mild surprise.

“When did you work it out?”

Nat flopped onto the sofa beside Clint “The first day.” Laura’s face fell a little, and Nat raised an eyebrow at her “I’m an international spy.” she reminded her friend. “Observation skills are in the job description. Plus, I’ve been pregnant, I know cravings and morning sickness when I see them.”

Laura looked down at the half-eaten banana in her hand and sighed, Clint snickered.

“Hey! You’re supposed to be on my side!” Laura protested.

“Errr” Clint said, suddenly looking like a deer in headlights, and Nat felt like laughing herself.

“So, boy or girl?” she prompted, only partly to rescue her partner.

“We don’t know yet” Clint said, grabbing desperately at the lifeline “Laura’s only 10 weeks along.”

Nat nodded, trying to push aside the strange certainty that had just risen up in her that the baby was a boy. There was no way she could know that. “So the baby’s due around April then?”

“They should be.”

Clint’s head whipped towards Laura “What do you mean should be? Are you saying something could go wrong? What could go wrong?”

The sudden panic in her pseudo-brother’s voice did not calm the sudden surge of fear Nat felt at the idea that something could go wrong. Nat was all too aware of the terror that something might go wrong in a pregnancy. Even brainwashed and hyper-focused on the KGB, she had carried around a constant, crippling fear that her baby would die in her womb. The very fact that she shouldn’t have been able to get pregnant at all had given her several dozen reasons to be afraid, and those fears had only been encouraged by the fact that she dared not go to any doctor for a checkup, knowing what might happen to her baby if the KGB heard. The relief she’d felt when Daisy had been born and, as far as she could tell with her very, very limited knowledge, born healthy, had been indescribable, even tinted by the fact that she wasn’t really sure how to keep her that way. She well understood the fear.

“Nothings going to go wrong.” Laura said hastily, “Statistically it is very unlikely, significant complications are very rare. I meant that due dates are rarely accurate.”

Clint relaxed significantly, but Nat was certain this wasn’t the end of it. She knew, just from knowing Clint, that he was going to attempt to mollycoddle Laura until she threatened to attack him with a spoon again. She glanced between Laura and Clint, trying to decide whether she wanted to preserve her sister-in-law’s sanity more, or be entertained by watching Laura explode at Clint more. The latter was very, very tempting, but unfortunately, she should probably go with the former. Shame.

\------------

If, six years ago, someone had asked Natalia Romanova where she would have been in six years time, she would probably have thought ‘a grave’ given the life expectancy of many agents and answered ‘where-ever I was sent’ which would have been the answer to show her loyalty and avoid any potential punishment. What Natalia would _not_ have answered, was a hospital exam room. She would _certainly_ not have answered a hospital exam room with her pregnant sister in law.

Natasha blamed Clint for this. Her attempts to stop Clint’s attempts to wrap Laura up in cotton wool and confine her to an armchair had not been entirely successful, which is to say, they hadn’t been successful in the slightest, and he was driving Laura insane. Hence Laura’s announcement that Nat was coming with her to her check-up and not Clint. Laura hadn’t really asked Nat, who would probably have said no, but the pleading look Laura gave her, that _screamed_ ‘please, for my sanity, please!’, somehow managed to make her leave Clint babysitting Daisy and get in the car with Laura.

The check-up was strange. It was Laura’s second, and apart from the general health check, the visit seemed to involve passing on significant amounts of information about pregnancy to the expecting mother, and whoever was with her. Some of it was familiar things, morning sickness, increased hunger, tender breasts.... Other parts were distinctly less familiar.

Apparently you weren’t supposed to eat seafood when pregnant. Natasha briefly remembered part of the mission that had taken her to a seaside village after a target and eating pretty much nothing but seafood for a week. She kept her face blank and decided not to react to that. You were also supposed to limit consumption of caffeine, and avoid anything that might give off toxic chemicals. Nat distinctly remembered breaking into a paint factory at once point, and staying up for days on end using caffeine was practically normal for spies. She decided not to react to that either. You were not supposed to wear stilettos or drink alcohol, both of which she’d done dozens of times undercover. Pregnant women were also not supposed to play contact sports. Well, _technically_ , the kind of close-up hand-to-hand combat she’d been doing for most of her pregnancy wasn’t a _sport_. And she _had_ done her level best to avoid fist fights once she started to develop a bump. Laura’s eyes had flickered over to her at that one, a spark of amusement in them, and it had taken far more willpower than Nat was willing to admit to stop herself from turning red. She decided not to focus on the fact that it was something of a miracle that Daisy was even alive.

Laura dragged her to a shop to get some maternity clothes when they were finally done (and, much to Nat’s relief, out of the hospital), and then to a cafe, when she finally blurted out what had clearly been on her mind all morning.

“Where you scared?”

Nat looked up from her coffee (Laura had gone for non-caffeinated tea, making Nat feel irrationally guilty about all the coffee she’d drunk while carrying Daisy), “You’ll need to be a bit more specific” she said dryly.

“When you were pregnant with Daisy I mean.” Laura said. “Where you scared of being a parent?”

Nat tried to think back to those days, the fear for her baby tangled with the driving need to complete her mission. “No” she answered honestly.

Laura’s shoulder’s slumped, and before she could clarify, the woman was speaking “I am. What if I’m a terrible mother? What if I do something wrong and my baby dies? What if I give my child long lasting trauma? I know that’s silly, you can’t have been taught much about how to raise a child and you weren’t scared, and you had so much more to deal with than I do and you managed fine, but you’re you and you can do anything and...”

At this point Nat cut through Laura’s ramble to say a little incredulously “I did _not_ do fine! I broke just about every rule for pregnancy that doctor listed, except for not smoking. I fought and killed a man only hours before Daisy was born. I almost got my infant _shot_ being careless! And have you forgotten that I tried to leave Daisy with you because I thought it would be for the best? Laura, I wasn’t worried about being a parent because I didn’t even _think_ of it. I was too busy trying to keep myself alive and healthy and not _kill_ the baby in my stomach to consider what it would be like to actually raise a child. Laura, if you’re going to compare yourself to me then you have absolutely nothing in the world to worry about because if _I_ can keep a baby alive and have her turn out as amazing as Daisy is, then you won’t have the slightest problem.”

Laura gaped at her across the table, then said a little faintly “That is somehow simultaneously the most comforting and worrying pep-talk I have ever heard.”

Nat burst out laughing “You’re going to be fine Laura. You and Clint will work it out. I have no doubt about that.”

“Thank you. You don’t give yourself enough credit though, you’re a great mother.”

Nat shrugged “Clint, Phil, Maria and Fury are the main reasons Daisy is so amazing. I have no idea what I’m doing half the time.”

“Nat, you always put her well being and happiness above your own! You left everything you knew even when brainwashed to be utterly loyal in order to protect her. You work a high-stress job with long, unpredictable hours and you still make time to maintain a routine for your daughter that includes education, healthy eating and sleeping patterns, and family time. You’re doing fine.”

Nat’s eyes felt warm with tears, and she blinked them away. “See, you know all the things you should be doing already. You’re going to be an amazing mom.” she deflected, and Laura smiled at her.

“You’re probably right. I suspect nerves are normal though.”

“As probably is Clint’s coddling.” she pointed out, changing the subject to something a little less raw. Laura groaned into her tea.

“If he tells me to sit down and rest one more time, I’m going to borrow his bow and _shoot him_!”

Nat let her face pull into an amused smirk “Want me to hold him down? It would probably be cathartic.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

\----------------

Mercifully, Nat and Laura managed to get Clint to ease up on the coddling, and by the time the fortnight was up, Nat managed to load Clint back onto the quinjet (the one she’d brought, Clint had flown commercial) with only minimal last minute fussing. The plan was to talk to Coulson about Clint taking more time off over the next six/seven months, and then an extended time off after the baby was born.

Telling Coulson didn’t go quite how they expected though. To start with, they had planned to lead up to it, at least talk about the farm for a moment before announcing Laura was pregnant. Instead, they arrived at the senior agents break room (they’d already tried his office) and Daisy sprinted over to get a hug and announced “Auntie Laura’s _pregnant!_ ”

Coulson had opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, closed it again, and then sat down.

“Congratulations” he said finally.

“Err, we were going to lead up to it” Clint said, restraining his amusement at their handlers face.

“It’s the thought that counts.” Phil said dryly.

“So can I take an extended leave from late March?” Clint asked.

Coulson hesitated, and Nat’s eyes widened. Shield, in her experience, was very, very different from the KGB, and she hadn’t thought that Clint expecting a child, and wanting some time off for it, would be an issue in any way.

“Coulson?” Clint asked, voice showing his own confusion.

“We might be able to arrange something better,” Coulson said finally, “but we’re going to need to talk to Maria and Fury. There’s....we’ve been planning...hang on.” He lifted Daisy from his lap, where she’d climbed as soon as he sat down, and stood up.

Nat and Clint trailed him to Maria’s office, where Maria took one look at the three of them and asked “What have you two done _now_?”

“Hey!” Natasha protested, although the sentiment was possibly deserved given their track record.

“Uncle Clint’s having a baby!!!” Daisy announced, jumping up and down with excitement at getting to deliver the news again.

Maria stared blankly at Daisy for several seconds, then looked up at Clint, who nodded in confirmation.

“Ah, I see. That does change things. I’ll see if Fury can have that meeting now.”

Nat and Clint exchanged looks. ‘that meeting’ sounded a lot like there had already been something big in the works that they’d been about to be read in on. The fact that Clint asking for leave in six months would change it did not bode well. Either it meant they were planning something very, very big, very, very early, or they were planning something that would run for at least six months, which Nat did not like the sound of _at all_. She was _not_ leaving her Pauchok for six months. She was _not_. Mentally she prepared for a fight, aloud she said “Phil, is Melinda around? Could she babysit for a bit?”

“No! I wanna come too!” Daisy protested.

“Not this time Pauchok.”

“Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaaseeeeee, I’ll be quiet?”

“I said no Daisy.” Nat said, letting a hint of warning seep into her voice.

Daisy looked like she was considering stomping her foot “Why noooot?” she whined.

_Because I don’t want you to see me shout at your grandpa if it comes to that._ “Because this is an adult only meeting.”

“That’s not fair!” Daisy said, her tone warning of an imminent tantrum.

Nat gave her daughter a stern look “I don’t care if it feels fair or not. You’re not coming. And if you don’t calm down you will have an early bedtime. Understood?”

Daisy scowled, but she did attempt to moderate her tone down to merely sulky “Yes mama.....But I don’t like it!”

Nat bit her lip to hide her smile, and glanced up at Phil in question, and he grabbed his phone. Melinda was on the helicarrier, and could babysit, and they took the long route to Fury’s office to drop Daisy off at one of the gyms on the way.

“So, what’s going on?” Clint asked when they finally got to the director’s office (Nat noted with distinct amusement that there was still a couple of paintings of pirate ships up on the walls) and had secured it, and settled into chairs.

Fury didn’t bother beating around the bush “We’re transferring you two and Coulson to the Triskelion.”

“ _What?_ But I’ve always been based on the helicarrier! Ever since we _had_ a helicarrier!” Clint protested, but Nat didn’t respond, her mind too busy running through the implications.

“Exactly” Maria said “You were assigned here when the helicarrier was new. To help establish it. It’s established now, and we think it’s time to shake things up at the Triskelion.”

“You two are moving too.” Clint said, dawning realisation in his voice.

“Just Hill, the top agent at the Triskelion announced last week he intends to retire soon, and I want Hill to take over.”

“And I want at least one of you two working around the Triskelion. The helicarrier was designed as a moving base, to go to a major problem and deal with it, but you two go on missions all over the world. There’s no point having you two here, it would be easier to coordinate your missions if you were always based in the same place.”

Natasha already knew everything Maria was saying. She had known for a long time. But the helicarrier was their home now. It had been home for years, and Nat hadn’t thought she’d ever have one. And this was the only home Daisy had ever known. This was a nigh-untraceable, hard to reach, constantly moving, _safe_ home.

“No.”

Clint, Phil, Maria and Fury all turned to look at her at the same time.

“Natasha...” Phil started, but Nat was shook her head.

“No. The Triskelion is one place, one _recognisable_ , _high-profile_ place. I’m not taking Daisy there. Have you forgotten who she is? Have you forgotten who I am? You think the Red Room won’t come for her?” her voice rose, an edge of anger covering the fear she could feel swirling in her stomach.

“We won’t let that happen.”

“You think you can stop it?!? You can’t even find them!” Nat spat.

It was true, shield had been looking for where the red room had moved to since Natasha had defected, and they’d found nothing. They weren’t even sure it had survived the fall of the USSR, despite Nat’s insistence that it could survive anything.

“Nat, we’re not going to just make you two a target” Fury said, his voice clearly intended to be soothing. “You’ll be living in the city, not in the building, we’ll make covers’ for you, good ones, and we’ll take every precaution.”

“That doesn’t mean she’ll be safe!” Nat said, trying to choke down the irrational fear building in her stomach to find concrete, sensible reasons why they should stay with the helicarrier.

“Nat” Clint said, and it was just her name, but it was enough. She turned to face her partner, eyes wide with betrayal.

_You can’t keep her away from the world forever._ Clint signed

_I’m keeping her safe!_ She signed back, the movements of her hands jerky with anger.

_You’re hiding her away. You have to let her live._

_By getting her killed?_

_Natasha_ Clint signed with patient exasperation _do you honestly think that between the four of us, we can’t keep her safe?_

_You can’t know she’ll be safe. No-one can know. She needs protection._

_Nat, Daisy needs to be with other kids her age. She needs to go to school._

“No!” she said aloud, “ **No.** ”

She flung herself to her feet and stormed out of the office, a sick feeling swirling in her stomach. Clint made a sound of surprise behind her, and Maria and Phil shouted for her to come back, but she only sped up, vanishing out of sight before anyone could think to follow her.

\-------------

It was Clint who found her, five hours later. It was evening by then, and she wasn’t surprised it was Clint who’d managed to work out where she’d gone. She’d never been back up here for anything other than catching a quinjet, never mind been so close to the edge since that day during deprogramming. The top deck of the helicarrier was as bitingly cold as it always was, but she’d stolen the thick clothes the agents assigned to deal with take-off and landing used, and pulled them over her own. She’d tied herself to the railing for safety, then sat on the edge, legs dangling off the side of the helicarrier and arms crossed over the railing.

The upper deck was almost deserted, and she’d given the agents who were there _l_ _ooks_ whenever they bothered her, so they’d mostly left her alone. She’d watched the sun set in the distance, the sky washing over with reds, oranges and pinks, and she’d felt her heart grow heavy.

It had been over four years. Over four years since she’d arrived scared, defiant, and desperate, with Daisy. Four years since Clint had brought her in from the cold and given Daisy a safe home. Four years since she’d met the people who had become family. Four years in a place she’d come to trust as reasonably safe. As safe as a military base could be at least. Safer than anywhere else. And spectacularly cut off from the rest of the world.

Clint, dammit, was right. If Nat wanted to give Daisy a normal life, a chance at a life away from spies and assassins and danger, then she had to leave the helicarrier. Had to give Daisy a life with normal things. A house, school, a chance to be with kids her age, a chance to live in the world, not just floating above it. She couldn’t keep her daughter completely safe forever, not if she wanted to let her live her life. But the list of things that could go wrong, ways that her daughter could end up hurt or kidnapped or dead, cycled round her head over and over and over. And beneath it all, Nat couldn’t help remembering the dream from after Hunan over and over. The images that couldn’t possibly be real but which seemed seared into her consciousness. The images that made her want to wrap her Pauchok up in cotton wool and shield her from the entire world.

But she couldn’t. She mustn’t. Refusing the move that would allow her daughter the social contact she needed to develop might keep Daisy safer, but it would also hurt her. She mustn’t. She mustn’t.

Clint didn’t say anything when he dropped down to sit next to her, just checked the knots of the harness she’d attached herself to the railing with, and attached his own next to hers. He sat silently beside her, and they watched the occasional quinjet take off or land.

“I want to set the covers up myself. And there’s to be no mention of any of it within shield, just like Laura and the farm.”

“I’m sure they’ll agree to that” Clint said, and silence fell for a little longer.

“You’re going to be based at the farm I assume. Only one of us tactically needs to be near enough to the Triskelion to be instantly called upon, and you’ll want to be with your family.”

“You’re my family too.” Clint reminded her “And don’t think you’re not still visiting whenever possible. My kid will want to see their Auntie Nat.”

The name made something pang deep within her, a familiar sense of deja-vu to the name. Nat was beginning to hate the feeling, every time it happened she felt a little bit more like something was wrong. Like her head wasn’t quite right. Like the red room’s hold on her was still strong.

But it had been four years since the red rooms programming had been anything more than instincts and hints in the back of her mind. Their control was gone. She was safe. Daisy was safe. She sighed.

“I suppose we’d better go in and talk to Phil or Maria before they think we’ve stolen a quinjet and gone rogue again.” She said.

Clint snorted, but he climbed to his feet and untied both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Nat.
> 
> Comments make me smile


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moving home takes significantly more work when your lives no longer fit into two duffle bags

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I managed an on time update!!! Hope you like it!

Daisy took the news that they were moving to the Triskelion without much reaction.

“Does the Triskelion have a gym?”

“It has many more than the helicarrier.”

“Does it have a pool?”

“It’s got a few”

“Does it have a zip-wire?”

“I’m sure it does.”

“Can we bring Nutella?”

“Of course.”

“Ok then.”

The lack of care that they were moving (although she wasn’t sure that the part about Grandpa and uncle Clint not coming with them had quite sunk in yet) lulled Natasha into an unfortunate sense of security, especially as she’d expected her other major piece of news to be a good piece. Unfortunately, the reaction to being told she was starting school next semester was distinctly less cheerful.

“But I don’t want to go to school!”

Nat gaped at her daughter “But you love learning! And you enjoy playing with other kids don’t you?” She’d certainly seemed to enjoy it when they went to the playground in the town near the farm.

Daisy shook her head “I want to learn to be an _agent_.” Daisy paused, and then sudden glee lit up her face “Can I go to the Academy?? That’s school isn’t it? _Agent school_!” she looked suddenly very, very excited.

Natasha for an instant considered walking to Maria’s office and strangling her for giving Daisy that mini-ops suit. “No, you’re not old enough.” And there was no way she was letting her go even if she was.

Daisy’s face fell, and then turned stormy. “I don’t want to go to school.” she repeated.

“Daisy, you need to go.”

“ _Why_?” she demanded.

Nat held in her sigh, this would probably be easier if she didn’t have to hide the fact that she was almost as reluctant as Daisy to do this. “Because you need to spend time with people your own age.”

Daisy chewed her lip “We could go to the playground more often.”

“That’s not enough sweetheart”

“Why not? Its always been enough before.”

Nat really did sigh then, and she resigned herself to the fact that this wasn’t going to be an easy conversation. “It hasn’t been enough Pauchok, there are lots of things that kids with normal parents get to learn that you haven’t really.”

“Like what?”

“Umm, like making friends your own age. And how to spend regular hours every day doing structured things.” she thinks back to the brief research she’d done most of a year ago on homeschooling, and an internet site that had listed the merits of homeschooling and normal schooling. “And there are things I can’t teach you much of. Like art, I bet you’d get to do lots more arts and crafts at school.”

Daisy scowled “But I don’t want to go to school. I want to stay with you.”

“I know Pauchok, and I like having you with me too, but I want you to have the opportunity to be normal.”

“Like on TV?” Daisy asked

“Well, not quite like that, but sort of, yes.”

Daisy thought a moment “So that I know how to be normal?” she asked.

“Yes” Nat said in relief, glad Daisy seemed to be acclimatising to the idea.

“So, it’s gonna be like undercover training.” she said, starting to look happier.

Wait what? Abort. Abort! “No! _Not_ like undercover training! You’re just going to be you!”

Daisy’s face fell again “I don’t get a new name and a secret identity?”

Bother. She _did_ need a new name, and a cover story. It wasn’t like she could just send her Pauchok to school as ‘Daisy Romanoff’ and expect it not to flag any system. “Well....” she said, and Daisy’s whole face lit up. _Damn it Maria!_

\-----------

October faded into November, bringing with it a slew of short missions, with work packed into every corner in between. The move was bigger than Nat had initially realised when it was brought up (not that she’d really been focussed on anything but her initial gut reaction of _no way in hell_ ). It wasn’t just her, Clint, Phil and Maria who were moving. Fury and Maria wanted to implement wide changes, shifting the helicarrier further towards a mobile command base rather than just a base that moved. This mostly involved making it more of a massive rapid response team (as opposed to Clint and Nat who were a two-person work-out-what-the-hell-is-going-on-and-deal-with-it team). The shift not only involved moving those people who weren’t generally used for that kind of mission, but also promoting and training those who were. Fury had both Clint and Nat pitching in with the extra training going on, although with strict warnings about the limits they were allowed to push the agents to. Nat had protested indignantly that they’d been training the prank war rookies for over a year now and hadn’t traumatised any of them, but Fury just walked off muttering about ‘shield mafia’ which Nat supposed was probably fair. On top of extra training responsibilities, both Nat and Clint were going on more missions, covering for the lower manpower while more and more agents were drafted into preparations. And when they weren’t on mission, training others, or training themselves there was paperwork to sort out, and packing to somehow get done as well, and several dozen other things that had to be sorted out.

By the time they’d reached the middle of November Nat had let several things fall down the priority list, not least discouraging Daisy from the Agent Game. She simply did not have the energy, on five hours of sleep a night and increased exertions (which given strike team delta’s usual levels of activity, was impressive), to dissuade her Pauchok from finding a training slant to everything, or to find another way to persuade her to cooperate with everything that needed to be done. So she let Daisy sit in on some of the less gory classes she was leading (and hadn’t the world gone mad: her ending up as a teacher, even temporarily and on topics like ‘Rapid Threat Assessment’ and ‘Manipulation of Allied but Unhelpful Local Officials’ and ‘Techniques for Rapid and Undetectable Searches’ and so on, was _not_ what she’d thought she’d end up doing when she joined shield.) and do her own little training workouts during the physical training sessions she was leading. She even let Daisy try out the throws she was teaching the shield agents, and then taught her a few that would actually work for her height and weight.

Moving out of the helicarrier and starting school made Daisy more vulnerable to discovery, she rationalised, it couldn’t hurt for Daisy to know a bit more about defending herself. There was much less of a solid rational for caving (after hours of pleading) to allowing Daisy to run packets of paperwork around the helicarrier for Maria and Fury, but it kept her busy for a couple of hours at a time while Nat taught classes that she was _not_ letting a five year old listen in on, or just got on with things faster than she could when she needed to look out for Daisy as well. And it burned off some energy, and usually left her willing to sit down and practice her reading and writing, or do some maths, or at least some coding. And at least Nat and Clint seemed to be doing better than Maria was. Despite Phil’s best efforts, and the fact that Nat and Clint were being as helpful as they could (they’d even sworn off pranking until the move was finished), Maria appeared to be drinking more coffee than water and seemed to be trying to function on three hours of sleep a night.

The last week in November mercifully brought a slackening of pace, as training ended and the new helicarrier systems came into place. Maria handed over her office to the new base leader and slept the clock round twice, which rather defeated the purpose of handing over while she was still present to help with any major crisis, but luckily nothing major went wrong. Both Nat and Clint suddenly realised that they’d barely started their own packing and paperwork.

It wasn’t until she really started packing up that Natasha realised just how much _stuff_ she and Daisy had accumulated over the years. Gone were the days when their entire life fitted in two bags. Somehow, over the last four years with shield Natasha had acquired not just things for missions (although she had an impressive collection of fancy clothes from being undercover, as well as a very satisfying collection of weapons) but, among other things, comfortable clothes for lounging around in, a small collection of Russian literature, a collection of half-used perfumes, toiletries and make-up things, a handful of gifts, and even a few knick-knacks! And that wasn’t even starting on Daisy’s things.

To start with were a bunch of things that were definitely _not_ coming with them. A handful of old bibs or babygros and baby toys that had never quite been thrown out. The travel cot shoved under Nat’s bed and forgotten about. A collection of empty or dried out finger-paint tubs. Several dozen other little things that had been shoved to the back of drawers or the cupboard and Nat had somehow (despite their very limited storage) never gotten round to dealing with. But then there were the things that had to be sorted through. The wallpaper of Daisy’s artwork that had gone up over the years, most of which Daisy couldn’t care less about but a few of which were precious. The collection of clothes Daisy had grown out of but resisted getting rid of (including a truly impressive number of pieces of clothing with Captain America on them, showing Coulson’s hand in her wardrobe); a mini-library of books, most of which Daisy hadn’t read in at least a year and a half but adamantly refused to get rid of; a small collection of half-to-completely used up art supplies; a small but mildly concerning collection of electrical components, likely from the labs; and a significant collection of soft toys. All of which had to be gone through and either thrown away (or put into a box to be given away when in DC) or packed, which involved an exhausting amount of arguing about things there was really no point keeping but Daisy didn’t want to get rid of. And then there were the things which were much harder to pack, like the small chalkboard that would just have to be carried onto the quinjet (but which had been used so much over the years that it was most definitely coming), and Daisy’s bed which sci-tech had unfortunately _not_ designed to be easy to take apart and pack up for transport, but Clint managed it.

And then there was their new identities to deal with. To make it easier for Daisy, and less likely that the five year old would say something she shouldn’t, Nat had decided to keep the story as close to reality as possible. Which wasn’t all that close to reality, but she did her best. Her new identity was Natalie Smythe, a child of, now dead, Russian immigrants who worked as a translator in the army. Natalie Smythe was 31, having joined the army at 23 after graduating with a major in languages and training as a translator. She’d become pregnant with her daughter two years later, but her boyfriend, a young soldier, had been killed in combat before the birth. She’d raised her daughter on military bases, taking her with her from assignment to assignment for years, but as it was time for her daughter to go to school, she’d decided to settle down a little, and had moved to be near her uncle Josh (Phil) and his wife Annie (Maria, and Nat wasn’t even going to pretend not to have laughed at the irritated look she’d gotten for ‘marrying’ her to Phil), who would look after her daughter when she had to work late. That would hopefully explain away any odd behaviour from Daisy, without making anyone think of ex-KGB agents, secret security agencies or flying military bases.

For Daisy’s own documents, she found herself making two sets, one for Daisy’s real documents (which nobody had quite gotten round to making, even Maria) should she ever need them, and one for the identity she was going to live and go to school with. She’d let her Pauchok pick her own first name, provided it wasn’t too close to her real name. Daisy had promptly forgotten every name she could think of and suggested blankly “Steve?”

“Is that because it would make uncle Phil laugh?”

“Uh-huh”

“Steve’s a boys name Pauchok” she pointed out. Daisy’s face had fallen.

“Laura?” she suggested after a long pause.

Nat thought about it “Not for your first name, the association is a bit too close, how about for your middle name though?”

“Ok.” There had been another, even longer, pause while Daisy ummed and erred, and then her face had lit up “Skye! Can I be called Skye?”

Something about the name made Nat feel like someone had just run cold fingers down her back, but she couldn’t think of a single reason why she would feel like that, and so she’d agreed. She’d gotten several different contacts to put the documents together (plus basic documentation for Josh, Annie and Natalie’s work colleague Caleb (Clint) and Josh’s work colleague Jonathan (Fury)), and made sure both Natalie and Skye had medical histories, as well as schooling records (which involved no little hacking, as well as some minor breaking and entering after a mission), bank accounts and a driving licence for Natalie.

When she was finally done, and had collected all the paperwork (after a detour on the way back from another mission), she found herself looking at two stacks of paperwork, one distinctly higher than the other. The first had all the documents their various covers would need, and was topped by a birth certificate for _Skye Laura Smythe_ and the other had Daisy’s real identity documents, topped by a birth certificate proclaiming her _Daisy Maria Romanoff_. She’d dumped the smaller stack on Maria’s desk, receiving a rare look of shock, that rapidly turned touched.

“When did you na...” Maria began

“Last week, Daisy agreed.” Nat said, and left before Maria could look any more emotional. Maria was nice enough to pretend it didn’t mean anything and nothing had happened after that, but Nat knew Maria understood how much it meant.

\---------------

The day they actually moved was chaos. Nat and Clint left the day before Maria did, packing a quinjet with enough boxes to pretty much fill the body of the quinjet (which Nat thought was an excessive amount of stuff to have and Clint said was actually very little given it was everything they owned), and flying to the Triskelion. They left most of the stuff in storage there, and took over a couple of bunks for a while. The plan was for Clint to stay for a week or so, and help with finding an apartment to buy (Not rent, because Nat intended to install advanced security systems and a gun safe and other things that most rental agreements probably didn’t allow. And it wasn’t like she didn’t have the funds, after four and a bit years working a high-risk job with food and accommodation provided, not to mention the funds she had leftover from her KGB and mercenary days (carefully moved around between bank accounts)) and set up, and then he would move to the farm permanently. From then on, they’d pick each other up on the way to missions, or travel there separately. She was going to miss Clint (miss him enough that she was even admitting it aloud!), but it couldn’t really be helped, and Nat and Daisy would visit when they could during the holidays (and when Nat had the leave).

Getting an apartment was something of an _experience_. It wasn’t that Nat had never bought an apartment before, she had, many times, quite a few of which she still had, scattered across the globe. Finding an apartment she considered safe enough (based on being somewhere they wouldn’t stand out in, how many entrances and exits the apartment had, lines of sight, and what sort of neighbours they would have) however, and that both she and Daisy liked, was new. The problem was probably that Nat wasn’t looking for a safehouse, she was looking for a home, which she had most certainly _not_ done before.

Not that Daisy had particularly high standards. The first apartment they were shown into by an estate agent had the bathroom right next to the door, and Daisy had run in and announced in tones of utter delight “It has a _bath_!!!”

The estate agent had given Nat a slightly suspicious side-eyed look, to which she’d a replied a little weakly “I like to keep expectations low?” and tried to make the words sound more like a statement than a question.

Daisy had promptly run out of the bathroom to explore the rest of the flat, and her awed yell had echoed back “Mama! _It has_ _windows!!!!!”_ Clint, the useless idiot, had made a choking sound and ducked out of the apartment.

“Very low.” Nat said, with a slight wince, as the estate agent looked at her in a way that clearly wondered if she needed to call child protection services. Nat spent a moment trying to think of an explanation for why her five year old thought a bedroom having windows was special that didn’t include explaining the helicarrier, and started developing a headache. Daisy sprinting back into the hall, brown hair somehow already tangled, and announcing “It’s so _big_ ” about the tiny, cramped apartment did not help.

That estate agent showed them four apartments, and then called child services. Nat thinks it was probably Daisy whispering just a little bit too loudly “Mama, I don’t think we’ll fit in these air-vents.” that did it. Nat frantically (but discretely, because unlike her daughter she knows the meaning of that word) signals Clint, who sets off the fire alarm. In the chaos that follows she swipes the estate agent’s phone, opens it up, inserts a small standard-issue chip, puts it back together again and sends a frantic text to Coulson, who spends the next ten minutes pretending to be child protective services.

Once they’d found a new estate-agent, Nat sent Daisy off for a walk with a snickering Clint, and things go a bit more smoothly. They drive around the city looking at different apartments, Clint taking Daisy for a walk while Nat looks around. If the apartment passes her safety levels, she messages Clint and he and Daisy look around too. It was ten in the morning when they started, but it is past five in the evening when they finally settle on an apartment, and they are on their third estate agent. Daisy is half asleep when they finally return to the Triskelion, but Natasha is satisfied. The apartment they finally find iis small, but neither Nat nor Daisy minded. It was three times the size that their bunk on the helicarrier had been, with two small bedrooms, a cramped study, a cramped bathroom (although it did just fit a bath, so Daisy was happy) and a reasonably large space with a small worktop that could function as kitchen, dining room and living room, and provided enough space for stretches and limited (non-sparring) training. More importantly, it is located on the fifteenth floor, directly below the roof, has excellent sight lines, two easy exits and two distinctly less easy ones, and is in a good neighbourhood. The apartment has no furniture, and is run down, with dirty paint, moth-eaten carpet and a bad lock on the door, but Nat doesn’t mind. Structurally it is fine, and she was going to gut it anyway.

The paperwork is all finished two days later, and she and Clint spend the next week working on it. Phil and Maria leave the helicarrier the day after they do, and while Maria is up to her eyeballs in work, Phil has significantly less, and offers to look after Daisy while they work on the apartment. Daisy protested this loudly, but Nat didn’t want her five year old daughter to close while she and Clint waved hammers and saws around, and so put her foot down. They borrow a shield car and take some harder to come by supplies from the store-rooms, and buy the rest of tools they need from Home Depot. They strip out the carpet, and drill into the walls, putting in hidden cameras and listening devices. They pull up some of the tiles in the bathroom walls, and insert thin metal boxes underneath for storage and then carefully replace the tiles to make the boxes hidden but accessible (with a decent tool and then something to re-attach the tile with). They replace the windows with bullet-proof glass, and wire them to signal whenever they were opened, closed, or touched from the outside. They located and wired the air-vents too, despite the fact that they were too small to sensibly climb through, and the door. They added a hidden camera to the outside of the door (a shield design that was distinctly smaller than the kind of thing anyone non-secret-service was likely to find) and replaced the lock with something much more advanced, and added a fingerprint scanner to the handle (also shield tech). They built two safes into the wall of the room Natasha claimed as hers, and covered the tops with plaster, and the front with a large plank of wood that pivoted up, and that with more plaster to make it look like a quirk of architecture. Nat intended to put her bed over it to hide it further. Then they tackled the kitchen area. They took out the shelves of the corner cupboard, and put in a large metal box, a little like a safe, but with air holes (complete with air-filtration just in case) and lined with padding. Nat had cashed in several favours with sci-tech to get them to make it, and it wasn’t particularly comfortable, and the only light source inside was a dim lamp built into the top, but it was bullet-proof, and fire-proof, and once closed and secured, accessible only with Nat or Clint’s iris scans. It wasn’t perfect, it could be opened with the right tools and enough time and effort, but if something went badly wrong, it would buy Daisy time.

\-------------------

Daisy thought moving would be fun. Uncle Phil said she was moving into the normal world, like on TV, and things looked fun on TV. And it had been fun for a while, they’d put all their stuff into a quinjet and gone to a big building uncle Clint called the Triskelion, and then they’d gone looking for a place to live, which had been fun too. Daisy thought she liked looking round lots of different places to live. They were all so _big_! And _all_ the rooms had windows!! And some of the places had baths! She liked baths, you could sit in them and make waves and play with bubbles. Showers were boring. And then uncle Clint had taken her on walks around the city while mama looked at more apartments, and they’d played at some playgrounds, and Clint got her an ice-cream and said not to tell mama, even though she probably knew anyway. Mama always knows.

And the apartment Mama and her both liked had two bunks!!! She was going to have a _whole bunk_ _all to herself_ , like a proper agent!! Except Clint said they were really called bedrooms, like at the farm, and that it was more like a normal kid than an agent. But it was still her own room!! And mama said they could decorate it!

But then Mama and uncle Clint left her at the Triskelion with uncle Phil for a week. Uncle Phil was nice, and fun, but Daisy wanted to help get the house ready, and it wasn’t fair! And uncle Phil had lots of paperwork to do, and Daisy wasn’t allowed to wander around the Triskelion like she could parts of the Helicarrier. And she couldn’t go play in the gym, or go swimming, or on the trampoline, and uncle Phil said she couldn’t explore the vents. And there was nothing _interesting_ in Phil’s office. Uncle Phil’s office at home had lots of interesting things in it because it had been his office for ages and ages and ages, but this office was new, and home wasn’t really home anymore. Mama and uncle Clint were making home spy safe and Daisy wanted to help and she wasn’t allowed and it wasn’t fair. And there was only so long she could practice reading, especially cus most of the books were packed. Uncle Phil managed to find something in Russian, and two books in English that were ok, and Mama bought some new books on the second day, but reading is only fun for a while before it’s boring. Uncle Phil let her fill out some of his resource use paperwork on a computer for a bit, which was real paperwork and _really cool_ but that got boring too. And there was only space to practice punching and kicking on the spot, and not move around and practice putting lots of punches and kicks together like Mama let her do when she was training the other agents at home. Except it wasn’t home anymore. And the bunks they were staying in for a while in the Triskelion were plain and boring, and Daisy was all round bored and moving wasn’t fun anymore.

And then Mama said that they were finally done with the bits she wasn’t allowed to help with, and she could help with the rest if she did ‘ _exactly_ what I tell you when I tell you’ which usually meant it would be really fun. But then Mama said that uncle Clint had to leave the next morning, and Daisy wasn’t sure she wanted the difficult bits to be done anymore. She didn’t like the idea of uncle Clint moving away from them. Uncle Clint lived in the bunk opposite them. He ate with them and sparred with Mama and played pranks and looked after Daisy lots and that was just how it was and she didn’t want it to change. But auntie Laura was having a baby, and uncle Clint needed to help auntie Laura, and be able to be closer than just visiting as often as he possibly could and so he had to go. And uncle Phil said that Clint didn’t want to leave Daisy either, but he had to go, and it would make it lots nicer for him if Daisy was really brave about it. And uncle Clint had promised to call really often, like he called auntie Laura really often when he wasn’t at the farm, so Daisy decided she could be brave about it.

So when uncle Clint hugged her goodbye Daisy just hugged him back, and didn’t ask him to stay, even though she wanted to. He hugged Mama too, and said something that made Mama hit him, but not like she really meant it, and her face looked a bit weird. Uncle Clint ruffled her hair, and said to prank Phil for him, and Daisy solemnly promised she would, and uncle Clint said ‘I’ve trained you well young padawan’ and Daisy asked what a ‘padawan’ was, and Mama said it was from a dumb Western film, and uncle Clint acted really horrified and said Mama had gone to the dark side and then they were bickering again. On TV it’s the kids that bicker, but in Daisy’s experience it’s really the adults. Uncle Phil says it’s just Mama and uncle Clint, but Daisy’s seen him join in whenever Captain America is mentioned, so she doesn’t believe him. Auntie Laura says she has a warped sense of normal, but she wouldn’t explain what that meant. And then Mama and uncle Clint weren’t bickering any more, and he gave Daisy one last hug, and then Mama was pulling her a safe distance away from the quinjet and he was taking off. She and Mama watched it until it was out of sight, and then Daisy let herself cry.

Mama didn’t say anything, just picked her up and cuddled her, and Daisy thought that maybe she was trying not to cry too. Mama was silly about crying, she said it was ok to cry, but wouldn’t cry herself. They went back to Phil’s office and moped for a bit, except Mama looked embarrassed when uncle Phil called it moping, and then he kicked them out to go work on the apartment, and Daisy remembered moving could be fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked the bit from Daisy's POV. I'm not sure how good it came out but I think I might start writing more from her POV.
> 
> Comments make me very happy :-)


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Romanoffs work on furnishing the apartment and find that Natasha doesn't have much more idea of how to operate in the normal world than Daisy does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this is on the late side, I've had a busy day. I've also got a busy week coming up, so I can't promise to update next Sunday, although I'll try to. Also, sorry about the tenses, I have this awful habit of switching from past tense to present tense and back again every so often (which you may have noticed in previous chapters), and it's a pain to fix so I usually don't bother!
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy the chapter!

The mall wasn’t what Daisy expected. She’d been to the mall before, in the town near the farm, but this wasn’t like that. This was much bigger, and there were so many people! Mama groaned when she saw how busy it was.

“I forget how stupid Americans get about Christmas.”

“I like Christmas” Daisy said, but her voice came out nervous and she couldn’t help clinging tightly to Mama’s hand. There were a _**lot**_ of people, and Daisy wasn’t sure she wanted to go into the mall.

Her mama smiled down at her “I know you do Pauchok.” then “What’s wrong?”

Daisy swallowed hard “Nothing” she said, because agents aren’t afraid of anything and she was going to be the bestest agent.

Mama raised an eyebrow, and she knew she didn’t believe her. Mama always knew when she was hiding something. She stopped on the pavement and crouched down “I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me Pauchok.”

“It’s stupid” Daisy said, kicking her foot against the ground.

“It’s not stupid if it’s bothering you.”

Daisy kicked the ground some more “That’s a lot of people.” she admitted.

Her Mama glanced towards the mall, and nodded “It is isn’t it? And it’s crowded and loud and it’s hard to keep track of what’s going on and that’s scary isn’t it?”

Daisy’s eyes went wide. “How did you know?”

“Can you keep a secret?”

Daisy nodded solemnly; she was good at secrets. “Uh-huh”

“I don’t like the mall either.”

Daisy let her eyes go wide “ _Really?_ Why?”

“Because they’re big and crowded and it’s hard to keep track of everything, and I don’t like that either.”

Daisy bit her lip “Do we have to go to the mall?”

“I’m afraid so, we need to choose things to put in the house, and it’s easier to choose if we can see it.”

Daisy hesitated, and Mama said “Did you know I met Clint in a mall?”

Daisy didn’t “Really?”

“Yes, uh, he tracked me down and invited me to join shield.”

“Is that the _whole_ story?” Daisy asked suspiciously. It sounded like one of those stories adults told sometimes where they took out all the bits they didn’t think she should hear. It sounded like one of those stories where so many bits had been taken out that there wasn’t much of a story left.

“No”

“Can I hear the whole story?”

“No, but you can have a piggy back through the mall until you feel more comfortable.” Mama offered.

Daisy weighed this up, and nodded. Piggy-back rides were fun, and she could hold onto Mama. And that would let her watch for danger more easily, and be a better agent. It wasn’t that she was _scared_. “Ok.”

Mama turned around so she could climb up, and they advanced into the mall.

There were lots and lots of different shops in the mall, and they went passed most of them. It was even noisier and more crowded on the inside than it looked. All the shops seemed to be playing music, and there were lots of flashing signs and brightly coloured ads. Mama was good at finding spaces to walk in though, and she walked quickly, and it wasn’t really scary. They walked/rode to a big but kinda emptier shop, and Daisy wiggled down. A man dressed in a uniform (but not a proper uniform because proper uniforms came with gun holsters) came over to ask what they needed, and Mama pulled out a list with Clint’s messy handwriting on it.

“We’ll need a single bed, two night-stands, two cupboards or chests of drawers, a child’s desk, an adult’s desk, a kitchen table, some chairs,an armchair,a sofa, some rugs...wait, we don’t really need an armchair, or rugs...oh, and carpet, and paint, and curtains I guess. We should probably start with those.”

The man in the uniform blinked at Mama, looking a little lost, and Daisy giggled.

“I’ll um, I’ll get you a map of where everything is ma’am. If that’s ok?”

“Perfect” Mama said, and Daisy caught the hint of a smirk in her voice and giggled. Mama was good at getting rid of people.

Mama let her have the map, and helped her work out how to get to the carpet section, but once they got there they both just sorta stopped.

“Mama?”

“Hmm?”

“What kinda carpet are we getting?”

“Kind of, not kinda”

“What kind of carpet are we getting?”

“Ummm”

Daisy looked up at Mama to find her face doing that thing it does whenever she pretends she doesn’t feel lost. Most people can’t tell when she’s doing that face, but Daisy can, she sees it sometimes when they go to the canteen and Mama has to decide what she wants to eat, or when someone asks Mama what she wants to do. She asked uncle Clint about it once, and he looked sad and changed the subject, so she hadn’t asked again. Usually, when Mama had that expression, Daisy or Clint suggested a few things, and Mama would pick from them, but there are too many options and Daisy didn’t know what to do, so she didn’t say anything.

“Mama?” she prompts.

“Uh, what kind of carpet do you want Pauchok?”

Daisy looked around. There were lots of types of carpet, and even more colours. “I don’t know.” she said, her voice coming out a little small.

“Oh” Mama said, her voice not sounding as confident as usual. Her grip on Daisy’s hand is tightening slightly.

“Mama? What kind of carpet is best for, ummm, for people like you an’ uncle Clint an’ uncle Phil an’ auntie Maria an’ Grandpa?”

Mama blinks, and then her hand relaxes around Daisy’s. “Well, nothing too noticeable, so no really unusual colours. Dark colours would probably be best, in case we bleed over it. And it makes spills less noticeable too I guess.”

“What about red?” Daisy suggested.

Mama’s face did a _thing_ Daisy couldn’t interpret, and she shook her head “Not red. I don’t want the apartment to be red.” she sounded very certain and Daisy wanted to ask why but Mama’s face was still doing the _thing_ so she said “Black?”

“Would you like that?”

Daisy thought about it “No, black is for missions, it’s too dark for home.”

Mama gave a startled laugh, and nodded “Ok, not black.”

They end up flicking through a small book of colours at the end of one of the shelves, and pick a dark green because Daisy likes the idea of the floor looking a bit like grass but dark colours are better for agents, and Agent Daisy wants to have the best spy house. They pick a texture by Daisy closing her eyes and running her hands over the sample pads until she finds one she likes. It’s squishy and thick and Mama touches it and says it’ll be comfortable for stretches and exercises, and smiles sort of proud at herself for having a preference. Mama writes down what she says is the ‘colour code’ and the carpet type, and they move on to paint.

There are even more types of paint than there are carpets. Daisy asks what spies would do again, and Mama says simple is best, so that ruled out both sparkly paint and bobbly paint. They found a book of colours and Mama said not red, and Daisy said not black, and not green because the carpet was green. They look at blues and purples and yellows and Daisy sees an example picture with a white wall covered in swirls of dozens of different coloured paints, and looks up at Mama with a pleading expression on her face.

“Can we paint like this? Can we? Can we?”

“I thought we were going for simple?” Mama said, sounding amused, but she didn’t say no.

“But this is _cool_!”

“Hmm, not the main room, that would look odd, how about we paint your room like that though?”

“ _Y_ _AYY_ ” Daisy exclaimed, bouncing up and down. Mama chuckled, gave her a piece of paper, and told her to flick through the book and write down the codes of the paints she liked. Daisy flips the book right to the front and goes through each page carefully, vibrating with excitement, and Mama watches over her shoulder. When she finishes, Mama takes the paper and adds a white paint to the list, and a purple paint.

“I’m going to do swirls too.” she decided.

“Why?”

“Because my teachers would have hated it.” she said, a smirk all over her face. Daisy giggled.

They pick a cream colour for the main room, so that they can close their bedroom doors and make the apartment look unremarkable, and a light blue for the study, because Mama thinks it’s soothing and Daisy likes that it kind of looks like the sky.

Daisy decides that this is fun again, and she skips halfway to the curtains. Mama says they should get blackout curtains, and picks a brand based on effectiveness. Daisy picks Captain America print curtains to go on top of that in her bunk - no, bedroom - and Mama says she’s been spending too much time with uncle Phil. Neither of them can pick a colour for the rest of the house so they roll a die to pick an aisle, and then again to pick a shelf, and then a pattern. It leaves them with a blue stripy design that Daisy thinks is a bit boring, but Mama liked it, and she didn’t want anything else so they picked it.

They go to furniture sections next, and Mama decided she liked wooden furniture, and picked out a practical looking bed frame pretty quickly, and Daisy opens all the drawers in the different night-stands and picks one based on it having the deepest drawer because “It’s easier to hide things in deep drawers Mama.”, and Mama adds it to the list, marking to get two of them. They pick out wooden cupboards with drawers on one side and a hanging space on the other because drawers are good for adding false bottoms, and hanging spaces are defensive if you knock the cupboard over. They break for lunch at a McDonalds that’s too loud and too crowded and smells funny, so they take the food outside and sit on a bench to eat. The food is greasy and salty and unhealthy and Daisy loves it, but Mama says it’s a treat and they aren’t doing it all the time.

They go back in and spend ages looking at desks. Daisy doesn’t even know where to start, but Mama at least seems to know a bit of what she wants now. She says desks should be big enough to spread out on, and have lockable drawers, and a foot space big enough to hide in, and a little lip at the edge of the desk to hide a gun taped to the underside. They find two adult desks based on these necessities, and Mama decides she likes the one with more drawers better than the slightly bigger one. There aren’t many child sized desks, but Daisy finds one with a little cork-board above the back of the desk, and decides she likes that one.

Daisy chooses a kitchen table based on Mama’s criteria of it being wooden, big enough to hide behind if knocked over, thick enough to protect from bullets, and heavy enough to act as a barricade. As a bonus it comes with matching chairs so they don’t have to make a decision on that. They look at sofas, and Mama says it should be heavy enough to act as a barricade as well but small enough to not take up too much room in the main space they had for exercises like stretches. Daisy decides it has to be as comfortable as the one in auntie Maria’s office. Mama said that was a good idea, given Maria often slept on that couch and chances were Clint would want to sleep on their couch at some point. They spent two hours sitting and lying on most of the couches in the shop before they come to a decision (the third-comfiest but second-heaviest couch), and Mama added it to the list. Daisy spotted the beanbag chairs halfway around the sofas and stood gaping.

“Mama! They make chair-shaped beanbags!!!!”

Mama had looked between her face and the beanbags and shrugged “They’ll be easier to move out of the way than armchairs. But you’re choosing the colour.”

Daisy chose two light blue ones and a dark blue one, and they went back to sofas. By the time they finished going round the sofas, and had made a decision, Mama’s watch said it was almost six in the evening, and Daisy didn’t want to get up off the sofa. Mama said she had to though, and that they only needed to look at fridges, and then they had all the essentials. Mama chose a fridge-freezer based off size, energy efficiency and the fact that it had little compartments she could keep things separate in if she needed, like things that _must not ever_ be eaten. They stumbled back to the paint section and filled a cart with white, cream, light blue, and dozens of small cans of every paint colour but red and black, including a glittery gold and a metallic looking silver. They take the cart and the list to the checkout, and Daisy giggles at the look on the man’s face as he puts all the cans through, and then the shocked look on his face as Mama hands him the list and orders rolls of carpet and curtains made to size for a week’s time (we’ll come and pick it up) and everything else for a couple of days after that. The man looks from the list to Mama, and then back at the list again.

“You know there are services that will furnish your house for you right? They’re very convenient.”

“I like doing things myself.” Mama says, which Daisy knows really means, ‘I don’t trust someone else to do it’.

“This is going to be a lot of work.” He looks doubtfully at Mama’s ‘be taken seriously as an upper-middle class mom but underestimated in a fight’ outfit. “Have you ever put carpet down before?”

“Of course I have” Mama said, voice scornful enough to make the sales clerk cower, and hastily start ringing things up.

“Uh, you haven’t got curtain rails on here, do you need them?”

“Bother,” Mama said “yes.”

“What kind would you like?”

Daisy felt her shoulders droop at the thought of more decisions. She peeked up at her Mama to find her face doing that thing were her eyes frown without any of her face frowning. It’s the face she often gives before shouting at someone, or hitting them, or scaring them until they run away babbling in fear. Daisy quickly thinks about what a spy would want from a curtain rail.

“Not red, and strong enough to hang really heavy stuff from.” she says (like a body, like in that film uncle Clint had that he said her Mama liked and she shouldn’t have borrowed without asking). The man looks at her, obviously dismisses her, and turns back to Mama. Daisy frowned, that was _mean_.

“Ma’am?”

“What she said.” Mama said, glaring, and Daisy smothered her giggle. The man swallowed nervously and hastily finished ringing everything up.

“All done Ma’am. If I can just have a phone number we’ll send you a message when your order is ready.”

Mama wrote one down for him, and paid, and they took the cart back to the shield car.

“Mama?”

“Yes?”

“Have you really put carpet down before?”

Her Mama smirked “No”

\----------------

They spent the next week painting. Mama borrowed some masks from shield for them to wear, because she said paint smelled bad, and you shouldn’t breathe it in for too long. They painted white over everything first, dipping rollers in trays of paint and smearing it over the walls. Daisy did the bits near the bottom, and Mama did the bits in the middle, and then she put Daisy on her shoulders to do the bits at the top. Daisy dripped paint on Mama’s head and kept getting her fingers painty and pushing her hair out of her face, so they went back to the Triskelion in the evening with white speckled hair and Daisy had paint streaks on her face too, but it was _so much fun!_ They finished going round the apartment with white paint on the second day, and by that time the study (they started painting in the study, then the bedrooms, then the main area. The bathroom had tiles on the walls.) was dry enough to put light blue paint over the top. Daisy accidentally dropped a roller when they were doing the top bit and it bounced off Mama’s jeans and left big blue splodges on the black denim, and Mama laughed and said that at least she could tell which were her painting trousers now. They did the study and added swirls of purple paint to Mama’s bedroom, and the next day they painted the main area cream, and the day after that they made hundreds of swirls all around Daisy’s bedroom, emptying most of the cans of paint and covering the walls and even the edges of the roof with swirls of different coloured paint. There are big spirals and small spirals and wonky spirals and spirals-that-didn’t-come-out-right-and-are-kind-of-blobs-spirals and it was _awesome!!!_ They put some of the leftover paint in a tray and swirl it together, and put their hands in it, and make multi-coloured handprints on Daisy’s bedroom door, and then on Mama’s.

They take the weekend off so Mama can train for a couple of days, and look around the Triskelion properly. They spend a morning climbing through the vents, and then Daisy has to stay with uncle Phil for a while again, because Mama doesn’t want people to see her at the Triskelion. Mama doesn’t say it, but Daisy knows it’s because she doesn’t want people to know she’s in the city. Mama was paranoid like that (Mama said all agents are paranoid, but Daisy’s watched other agents too and she thinks Mama is more paranoid than they are. But Mama’s the best agent, so Daisy thinks she should learn to be paranoid too.). Daisy begged until Mama promised to find somewhere to keep teaching her how to defend herself, and uncle Phil muttered about a warped sense of normal again.

The pick up the carpets and curtains and curtain rails from the shop after that, along with a bunch more nails. Mama looks up how to sort the carpet out, and then phones Clint to explain how to do it properly, and Daisy holds things and passes things and drags carpet where Mama tells her to, and between the three of them they manage to get the carpet down, even if it looks a little odd in some places. The curtains go up easily enough, and Daisy thinks the apartment is starting to look like the homes in TV. Except not really, because TV homes don’t have paint like in Daisy’s room and they don’t have small fingerprint scanners on the door handle, or make Mama’s device thing beep when a window is opened.

The rest of the stuff gets delivered the day after they finish the carpeting. They have to get it delivered, because even Mama can’t fit the fridge-freezer, or the sofa into a car, so a big van brings the whole lot, and carries it all upstairs, but Mama won’t let them set it up, saying she’d rather do it herself. Mama says that’s because she doesn’t want people she doesn’t know in the house when she can’t watch all of them at once, but Daisy finds later it’s also because she’s installing false bottoms into some of the drawers while she puts them together. They bring the chalkboard, and the boxes with the bits of Daisy’s bed, from storage in the Triskelion to the apartment, and spent most of an afternoon trying to work out how it all goes together. Unlike all the rest of the stuff, which came with instructions, sci-tech hadn’t bothered with anything like that. Mama complained that ‘it’s not like it’s easy to put together either! It has a built in stereo!’. It looked impossibly complicated to Daisy but Mama can do anything, and she managed to get it all together just like it used to be. When it was all put together they both looked at the frame, and then looked at each other.

“Mama?”

“Pauchok.”

“We didn’t buy mattresses did we?”

“No we didn’t.”

\-------------

They had to go back to the mall, but it was ok because they would have had to go anyway. They worked their way through choosing some sheets, and grabbed some duvets, and Daisy found a little fluffy blanket she liked, and Mama found a bedside table lamp she said would be useful, so they got that too. Then they tried out lots of mattresses until they both got in trouble for bouncing on them. The back of Mama’s neck went red, and Daisy couldn’t stop giggling, but Mama managed to make the sales assistant go away, because Mama can do anything, and they managed to pick mattresses without getting into any more trouble. They somehow managed to get the mattresses into the car, and up the stairs to the apartment, and they put Daisy’s into her bed frame.

It takes them the rest of the week to get the rest of the furniture put together. Some of the things are easy, like the table which just needed the legs screwed on, but some of the things, like the cupboards and desks, were really complicated, and uncle Clint had to help with a lot of it through the phone. Daisy keeps hearing him tease Mama about needing help, and Mama keeps calling him birdbrain, and Daisy misses him, but he calls her every evening just to talk to her, and that makes it lots better.

They are planning to go back to the mall to get all the rest of the things they need (Mama keeps thinking of things they need, like a kettle, and adding it to a growing list) once all the furniture is up, but the morning after they finish the furniture uncle Phil calls Mama at 3am and says she needs to go to work. Mama is supposed to have the rest of December off (she says it was part the deal when she’d agreed to move), but it’s an emergency, and it’s important, and Mama says she has to go, because she can make it less likely that people will get really hurt. Daisy knows she really means people could die, and it’s important she goes, and her Mama is a hero, but it still sucks that she has to go. It’s the 22nd of December, and Mama can’t promise to be back before Christmas, and they were going to move into the apartment tomorrow, and uncle Phil is going with Mama and uncle Clint and it sucks.

Daisy stays with auntie Maria for a few days, and it’s another few days spent hiding in an office, but auntie Maria lets her play video games (Daisy knows it’s partly because Maria is dealing with whatever reason Mama had to go as well as looking after her, and she can’t spare too much attention, but she’s glad anyway), and it doesn’t suck as much as it could, but it’s still pretty sucky. She gets to go to auntie Maria’s apartment though, which is cool. Auntie Maria’s apartment isn’t as cool as Mama and her’s is, but it has lots of books in several different languages, and the sofa is really comfy and she has lots of really fluffy blankets.

Mama gets back at 9am on Christmas morning, with her arm in a sling, bruises on her face, and the tell-tale bulge of bandages around one thigh, but that isn’t actually that unusual for Mama, so Daisy just makes sure to give her a gentle hug. Auntie Maria looks Mama up and down and tells her to go to bed, and pushes her towards the spare bedroom where Daisy’s been sleeping. Mama gives Daisy another hug, tells her ‘Merry Christmas Pauchok’ and then half collapses onto the bed, sleepily arranging her arm and then going still in seconds.

Auntie Maria lets her sleep until 1pm, then wakes her up and gives her lots of coffee (Daisy doesn’t understand coffee: it tastes really bad but everyone except aunt Laura seems to drink it loads and loads and loads. Uncle Phil says that’s not a good thing, but he was drinking coffee at the time, so Daisy isn’t sure he meant it.), and they have Christmas dinner together. It’s not like last year at the farm; auntie Maria has no decorations, and both her and Mama are really tired from dealing with whatever it is (Daisy knows she isn’t allowed to know, so she doesn’t bother asking), but the food is nice, and auntie Maria gives her a new video game, and Mama passes her a present from Clint and Laura, and one from Phil and a few new films from Mama. Auntie Maria looked at the films over Daisy’s shoulder.

“I thought that one wasn’t out until next month?”

Mama smirked “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.”

Maria raised both her eyebrows at Mama, who shrugged “Ok, I’ll tell you less lies.” and Daisy got the giggles again.

They play board games all afternoon and they end up staying the night because Mama is still exhausted and auntie Maria says not to be stupid.

\-------------------------

Natasha hated going on a mission just before Christmas. Her Pauchok put a brave face on it but she knew she was upset, and she knew she was bored of staying in someone’s office all the time. When she gets the briefing though she knows that Fury made the right call. It’s big and it’s serious and it’s going to be difficult. Coulson is coming to direct things closer to the field than the Triskelion, and Clint meets them there after flying commercial. They get suited up in a hotel room and go over the plan several times, but it still blows up in their faces when they put it into action.

The terrorist cell is annoyingly good, and their plan is pretty airtight. Shield was lucky to even hear about it, but they’d slipped up and one of them had gotten caught on a traffic cam and his name had popped and someone had looked closer.

By the time they’ve dismantled the planned terror attack, and rounded up all the members of the cell, Nat had acquired a fractured wrist, a knife cut in her upper thigh and broken ribs. Clint had burns all down his side and cuts across his back from going through a window, but they are both alive and they patch each other up. It is also two days later and she’s halfway across the world from her Pauchok on Christmas eve.

Clint gives her an envelope with a smirk and a ‘house-warming present for you Nat’ that she decides she should probably open later because neither of them are in good enough shape for her to hit him, and the look on his face suggests she might want to. They say goodbye in the same hotel they started in, both now rather more battered than two days ago, and then Nat flies through the night back to DC. Phil and Clint both go commercial, Clint back to the farm and Phil to his sisters for Christmas. She lands just after 6 am and yawningly directs some of the other poor agents stuck working on Christmas in what to do with their gear, and finds the shield car she’s been borrowing in the parking lot. She makes a mental note to work on finding her own car, and to check on her finances (she’d dropped a lot on the apartment in the last month and she’s not worried, but keeping an eye on it was a good idea).

Her Pauchok is delighted to see her, and hugs her gently but still tight enough to hurt, but Nat hides the pain and hugs her back. Maria gives her a glare and a quiet scolding on driving and sends her off to sleep and she half passes out in Maria’s spare room, grateful that she’d showered and patched up before flying out. Christmas passes in a blur of tiredness and decent food (Maria isn’t as good a cook as Phil or Laura (very few people were as good a cook as Laura) but she’s a lot better than Nat) and board games, and Nat doesn’t resist much when Maria insists they sleep at hers. She feels bad about not making Christmas special for Daisy but her daughter seems happy enough and at least they are together.

They spend most of the next day getting boxes from storage in the Triskelion and packing them into the car and taking them to the apartment. Nat insists on Daisy staying out of sight and it takes ages to get everything into the car with her injuries, even with Maria helping (They had bickered briefly in the morning about whether she could drive with a fractured wrist. Nat pointed out she’d flown the quinjet with it, but Maria just shook her head and said she really didn’t want to know and said bluntly that she wasn’t giving Nat the option of driving and she backed down.), especially as they have to coax Nutella out of Phil’s office and into the cat basket. Then it takes ages to take everything upstairs, even though Daisy helped carry the smaller boxes, and Nutella looked very, very suspicious of the new place. And then Maria insisted on taking them grocery shopping, which was a little patronising but it at least meant that Maria made most of the decisions about what to buy, with help from Daisy, and she only had to make a few. She’s getting better at making decisions, but sometimes it’s still hard to remember that she gets to make choices now, and it’s even harder to work out what she actually wants, and she’s done a lot of decisions recently and she’s thoroughly tired of it. They get lots of frozen food to put in the freezer and lots of sandwich stuff and a toastie maker, and Maria makes her promise to try to eat something that wasn’t sandwiches, takeaway or a ready meal at least once a day, and then adds that cereal doesn’t count.

Nat thought a little apprehensively of trying to feed her daughter healthily and joked “I thought you didn’t want me to burn the city down?”

Her Pauchok giggled, and Maria groaned “I _really_ wish you were joking. Please don’t destroy anything. Or poison anyone. Especially yourselves. Just, just stick to those dishes you can cook.”

Nat wasn’t sure that would entirely remove the possibility of destroying anything, but she just snickered and moved on.

They went back to the apartment and stuck everything in the fridge and freezer, or the cupboards, and Nat thought the place was starting to look like they actually lived there, despite the pile of still not unpacked boxes in the middle of the main room. Maria says the apartment looked nice, and Daisy piped up with explanations of why they picked the different pieces of furniture and Nat tries not to look embarrassed as she realises how many of their decisions were based on the ability to turn something into a barricade, weapon, or hiding place. Maria looks like she’s trying not to laugh and Nat opens Clint’s envelope to distract herself.

Clint’s envelope contains a piece of paper torn from an old children’s book. One of those ‘Baby’s first’ books, and this one shows a picture of a house with the caption ‘Baby’s first house’, except Clint has crossed out ‘Baby’ and written ‘Assassin’ underneath. She sighed loudly and pretended it was from exasperation and not fondness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note on Nat piloting and driving - this probably doesn't need saying but driving when injured in any way is really dangerous and a really bad idea, don't do it! Nat has a warped sense of acceptable danger and is a fictional character anyway!
> 
> Next up Daisy starts school!!!!
> 
> Comments make me happy! Honestly, I'm so delighted every time I see there's a new comment!


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha and Daisy are having a hard time adapting, and Daisy has a somewhat rocky first day at school

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to have left a three week gap! I meant to update last Sunday but I just didn't get enough time to write to finish the chapter. On the brighter side though this one is a little longer than normal and I think this week will be calmer than the last few and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to update again next Sunday :-) 
> 
> Hope you like it!

The ninth of January arrives far too fast for both Natasha and Daisy. They spend the time between Christmas and the start of the new semester unpacking boxes and putting things away in drawers. They have to decide where everything will go and each box requires a hundred tiny decisions and Natasha allows herself a moment to be relieved that she hadn’t had to do this four years ago. She couldn’t have handled it four years ago.

They have takeout for supper their first night in their own home. Natasha thinks about cooking but then realises that despite all the furniture she’d bought, and despite all the groceries Maria had collected, neither of them had remembered that none of the boxes from the helicarrier contained pots and pans, or plates. It’s a massive oversight, and she isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry when she realises. She’s not sure what it says about her that she can meticulously plan a mission, put together kit bags that contained not only essentials but just-in-cases, and rarely if ever forget anything important, but she can’t stock a house with essentials like cooking supplies.

Daisy thinks it’s hilarious, and her giggles cheer Nat up, and her Pauchok solemnly promises not to tell Clint. But then they both realise that they’ll have to go shopping again tomorrow, and Daisy’s shoulders droop. Nat rather shares the sentiment, but she tries not to let it show. She’s supposed to be the adult. She’s supposed to have it together and not internally panic at the thought of having to pick out things she (Natasha, not Natalie or Nadia or any other cover) actually wanted. She’s supposed to be a functioning adult that remembers they need essentials like pans. They get pizza for supper from a takeaway place Nat has a feeling will know them very well before long, and they eat it with their fingers from the box, and make a list of things they’ll need to buy the next day.

Nat lets Daisy talk her into giving her a self defence lesson in the living room after supper. She’d been distinctly hoping that moving out of a shield base into the normal world would distract her daughter from her desire to grow up to be an agent, but it didn’t seem to be having much effect yet. Maybe school would have more influence? In any case, her daughter had been so good, and hadn’t even complained about her having to go away right before Christmas, and Nat didn’t have the heart to say no. They tucked the chairs under the table, and moved the beanbag chairs into the kitchen area, and stretched out on the carpet. Nat’s first instinct about the carpet texture Daisy had chosen was right, it was comfortable for stretching on (even though she knew she’d put it down messily, and Clint was going to tease her about it, but it wasn’t like carpeting a house was high on the training priorities in the red room). Nat stretched carefully, making sure not to pull her stitches too much or jostle her broken ribs or fractured wrist too much, and she directed Daisy through practising some punches, kicks and blocks without taking part herself, because chances were Daisy would tell Maria or Phil about their first day in their own home at some point, and it wasn’t worth the reprimand. Afterwards Daisy had a bath (and Natasha got a mini-shower before Daisy toned down the splashing), and Nat brushed out her hair and helped her brush her teeth and read her a bedtime story even though Daisy had heard it twenty times before and could read it herself anyway (The children’s books said that children didn’t grow out of bedtime stories even when they could read, and Nat still doesn’t quite understand the point of doing something for someone perfectly capable of doing it themselves, but she is selfishly glad not to let go of the familiar ritual.). Then she tucks Daisy in and says goodnight and switches the light off and closes the door and goes to her own room.

She should probably go to the office and write up her mission report, she’s put it off for too long already, but her stomach feels strangely hollow. She can’t help looking around the small room and missing the presence of another bed. The only times in her life that she’s had a room to herself were on missions. She’d always shared a room. With the other red room girls, then with two other KGB agents, and then with Daisy. This small space that was just hers felt empty and lonely, and she didn’t think she liked it. She pulled pyjamas out of a drawer even though it was too early really to sleep, and told herself she was being stupid. She’d slept in hundreds of new beds, in hundreds of strange rooms in her life. And this wasn’t even a strange room! She’d painted the room, she’d fitted the carpet on the floor and she’d put together the furniture in it, and chosen all of them. By all sensible reasons the room ought to be much more comfortable to her than the bunk on the helicarrier she had been when she first moved there.

But when she’d been given that bunk she’d barely been Natasha, and she hadn’t really settled in herself enough to be bothered about a room being unfamiliar, and that was all it had been, a room. It hadn’t become a home until she’d stopped barricading the door every night, until Daisy’s artwork had started decorating the walls, until a small collection of pranking supplies had found a home under the bed, until the room had started to contain little pieces of her life and she’d started to feel comfortable. Until Clint, Maria, Phil, Fury and her infant daughter had started to show her the meaning of family and home. And now she did care, because home wasn’t supposed to feel empty and lonely, and she wasn’t supposed to feel uncomfortable at home. Urg. This is what she got for getting attached.

She went to bed early, and pretended it was just because she didn’t want to write the mission report, and not because Clint wasn’t around to play cards with. She curled up in bed and told herself that it didn’t bother her that the sheets didn’t smell like the special shield detergent that was good at getting blood stains out (like most agents, Nat used that kind on all washes, because she needed it often enough it was just easier.). She rested her head on the pillow, ignored the itch to raise her wrist up and cuff herself to the bed, and reflected on how she’d changed. Natalia would never have let herself become comfortable in a space, no matter how familiar it was or how long she’d stayed there. Comfort was something she’d been trained to be suspicious and wary of, and getting attached was discouraged with the same viciousness that coloured most red room lessons. Natasha was still wary of the risk getting comfortable represented, but switching off and relaxing was supposed to make an agent more effective in the long run, and Phil said it was healthy to be attached to some things. But the room was too empty, and she missed the sound of someone else breathing, and she couldn’t sleep and getting attached sucked.

She was just about to give up on sleep and get up and actually write that mission report when there was a soft knock on the door and Nat remembered with a mixture of guilt and relief that Daisy had never slept in her own room either. She opened the door to find her Pauchok clutching Teddy that was really a cat in one hand, with messy hair and tired eyes. “Mama, I can’t sleep.”

“Do you want to sleep with me tonight?” Nat offered, and pretended it was just for Daisy. Messy brown curls nodded, and Nat stepped aside to let Daisy into the room. She held the duvet up so her Pauchok could get in first, and climbed in after, tucking the duvet around them both. Daisy immediately curled into her side, and she reached a hand up automatically to brush over her tangled brown hair, her heart melting. Some things would never get old. They’d work on sleeping in their own rooms tomorrow.

\-------------

They didn’t work on sleeping in their own rooms tomorrow, but three nights later Nat moved them to Daisy’s room, and slept on the floor, so Daisy could at least get used to sleeping in her new room, even if they weren’t quite ready to sleep alone yet. She’d talked to Laura about it (after hearing and commiserating with a stream of complaints about pregnancy and sore backs, although at least she was mostly through the morning sickness now) and her sister-in-law had agreed with her that the dependence wasn’t a great idea, and in the long run it would be best for Daisy to get used to having her own room. But she’d also pointed out that everything was changing, and even for a child as resilient to strange happenings as Daisy, moving into the normal world was a huge change, and school was going to be even more of one, and maybe this was something that could be changed later. Natasha resigned herself to sleeping on the floor for the next while. Clint called her a helicopter parent, and Nat heard Laura scolding him in the background as she finished the call.

A week before Daisy is due to start the new semester, Nat starts preparing her. She’s horribly aware that while she’s used to changing names and cover stories like a coat, her Pauchok is not, so they start early. She gets Daisy used to answering to Skye, and answering questions about what her Mama did (translation work, not anything that involved combat in any way) and where she’d grown up (a few army bases), and made sure her Pauchok knew what topics she was _not_ to talk about.

“Like the helicarrier? An’ missions an’ guns n’ things?”

“Exactly Pauchok.”

As the day drew closer Daisy seemed to oscillate between wildly excited and cripplingly nervous. She barely touched her food at supper the night before her first day, even though Nat had made the chicken casserole Daisy really liked (after the first two days, she’d decided to stick with the few dishes she could make, rather than risking anything else.), and barely showed any interest in the bubbles in the bath.

“Mama? What if no one likes me?”

Nat froze for a second, then took another second to internally panic (because what on earth was the Black Widow supposed to say to that? It wasn’t exactly something she’d ever had to deal with, not like this anyway. If a mark didn’t like her she’d just changed herself until they did, and got what she needed. Which wasn’t something she was wanted Daisy to learn.), and then said “They will sweetheart.” Which wasn’t really helpful.

“But what if they don’t?” Daisy insisted, her lip vanishing into her mouth as she bit down. Nat tapped Daisy on the chin in reminder.

“I like you don’t I? And I barely like anyone.”

“You’re my Mama, you don’t count.”

“Auntie Maria then, she doesn’t like most people, and she likes you.”

Daisy perked up a bit, “That’s true.”

Nat had to hold back her snort of amusement at her daughter’s assessment of Maria and made a mental note to tell Clint. “See, they’re going to love you.”

“But auntie Maria is a grown-up. What if all the kids don’t like me?”

And there was the problem, “The kids at the playground near the farm like you.” She tried.

Daisy half-heartedly scooped up a handful of bubbles and smushed them together. “Angie said I’m weird.”

Oh. Nat tried to remember which one was Angie, and then remembered she couldn’t go beat up a kid just because she said something mean. Well she could, but it was probably overkill, almost certainly immoral, and would definitely get her into major trouble. “What’s wrong with weird?” she said finally.

“Weird don’t fit in. Weird sticks out.”

“Doesn’t fit in Pauchok. And that’s ok, you don’t have to fit in, not if it means you have to be someone else.”

“But what if I break my cover?” Daisy asked lips wobbling in a sure sign that tears were near.

“Pauchok, you don’t have to pretend to be someone else. Your cover is just details, it’s not who you are.”

“But you always pretend undercover, that’s what undercover meaaans.” Daisy pointed out, her tone implying her thought this was obvious. Nat bit back the urge to groan. She’d allowed the agent game for far, far, far too long.

“Pauchok, you are not going undercover. This isn’t a mission. This is school.”

“But I’m using a fake name.”

“Because it’s safer that way, you know that’s why.”

“Because the bad guys could hurt me to get to you?”

Because if the red room was still out there, they might come for her just because she was Nat’s daughter. “Yes Pauchok.”

Daisy looked up at her sneakily “If you teach me fighting I’ll fight ‘em myself.”

“ _No_!” Nat snapped. “No you will _not_. Daisy, look at me!”

Daisy looked up properly, and Nat saw the instant Daisy understood how serious she was, whether it was her tone, her face, or the fact that she’d called her Daisy for the first time in a week. “Daisy, if you ever see a bad guy you will run, run and hide and not look back. Do you understand me?”

Daisy looked at her for a moment, and then her shoulders slumped, and she nodded.

“I need to hear you say it.”

“Yes Mama, I understand.”

“Good girl” Nat whispered, and she kissed the top of her hair.

“But I want to fight baddies, like you do.” Daisy said, her voice small and disappointed.

“You’re too young Pauchok” Nat said, but she stopped using her _serious mama voice_ (Clint’s words, not hers).

“Then I wanna train.” Daisy said, a hint of whine in her voice.

“You’re too young for that too.” Nat said, reaching for the shampoo bottle. “Head back sweetheart.”

Daisy tipped her head back “I’m not. You started when you were little.”

Nat felt something freeze inside her, and her hands froze for a tiny instant before she started washing Daisy’s hair. “Where did you hear that?” she asked, and was proud of how normal her voice sounded.

“Someone in the gym when auntie Maria made you teach. They said you were bein’ unfair, that jus’ cuz you’d been training since you were five doesn’ mean they had.”

Nat allowed herself a second to be angry at herself for not keeping a closer watch on Daisy those final couple of weeks, and another to be furious with whichever shield agent had spoken carelessly around little ears. “They shouldn’t have said that.” She said, a little hollowly.

“Was it a lie?”

Nat wished deeply for a moment that she could say yes, but she didn’t want to lie to Daisy. She’d spent so much of her own childhood being lied to, and she needed Daisy to trust her. “Not exactly, I started when I was six though. But Pauchok, the people who taught me, they weren’t good people, and they shouldn’t have taught me.”

Daisy twisted to look at her, almost getting shampoo in her eyes “You were taught by baddies?” she asked, but her face wasn’t that surprised. Daisy was too smart and saw too much to not have instinctively known _something_.

“I was” Nat replied, throat tight. “But we’re not talking about that. Not until you’re older.” Much, _much_ older.

Daisy huffed, but mercifully dropped it, and bathtime passed without any more incident.

It wasn’t until Daisy was dry, dressed, and in bed, and the bedtime story was read, that the original topic came up again. “Mama? What if they don’t like me?”

Nat knelt by the bed and stroked Daisy’s hair “I think they will, you’re too amazing not to like Pauchok. But if they don’t, if it’s really horrible, I’ll look for other options ok? I’ll find a way.”

“Promise?”

“I promise Pauchok.”

“Ok. Goodnight Mama.”

“Goodnight Pauchok.”

She lay awake for hours that night, curled on the floor of Daisy’s bedroom, thinking about what Daisy had said in the bath and dreading the time when she couldn’t put it off any longer, and she had to tell her daughter the truth before someone else did. That her mother was a killer, that for a very, very long time, she’d been one of the really bad guys herself. When she finally fell into an uneasy sleep she dreamed of smiling and simpering and pretending to be everything she wasn’t, and when she gasped awake for the third time that night she promised herself she’d do whatever it took to give Daisy the life she’d never had.

\----------------

Standing outside Sparrowtree Elementary School, Nat considered for a moment just taking Daisy back home again and forgetting all about school. It couldn’t possibly be as safe as keeping Daisy close and hidden. But Daisy needed to interact with her peers, and she wanted to give Daisy all the opportunities that she never had. To give her the opportunity to live, really live, not hide away all her life. And it was a good school, she’d chosen carefully on a wide variety of factors (many of which most parents would never even think of), and she’d cased and bugged the school to be on the safe side (not that anyone ever needed to know about that, as far as the world was concerned she and Clint hadn’t taken a single day off working on the apartment and they definitely had not broken into locked school buildings and they had certainly not planted spyware in several places or run high level background checks on everyone they could think of.), so she pushed down her own nerves and squeezed Daisy’s hand reassuringly, and led her into the school. She’d already sorted out all the paperwork the private school needed, but this was her Pauchok’s first time in the school, and her first time meeting her new teacher and her first, well it was her first a lot of things. She didn’t let any of her uncertainty bleed into her posture or onto her face, but led her confidently to the Kindergarten classroom.

Daisy let her eyes trail with interest over the colourful displays on the walls, and Nat heard her murmuring that it was ‘just like on TV’. She held back her wince. She was pretty sure that kids were supposed to have better references than TV to the normal world. But that was exactly why they had to do this, so Daisy had better references than TV. They reached the Kindergarten classroom too quickly for Nat’s liking, but she squashed the feeling down and opened the door. Daisy followed her shyly through, trying not to look like she was nervous.

The Kindergarten class had two teachers, Miss Rachel and Mr Zaiden, and they were both already there. They both turned to look as the door opened, and came over to shake Nat’s hand.

“You must be Mrs Smythe, it’s nice to meet you. And you must be Skye.” He said, offering his hand with equal importance to Daisy. Nat mentally marked him up.

“It’s Miss Smythe actually, you must be Mr Zaiden, it’s nice to meet you.” She said, giving Natalie Smythe’s comfortable but not too confident smile.

“You have a funny name!” Daisy announced, shaking Mr Zaiden’s hand with great seriousness.

“Skye!” Nat scolded, but Mr Zaiden only laughed.

“I know I do. Do you want to come meet your other teacher? She has a more normal name.”

The other teacher laughed, and stepped forward, introducing herself to Daisy and offering to show her around the classroom. Nat watched her with one eye while she kept talking with Mr Zaiden.

“So I’ve been told Skye’s was homeschooled last semester, something to do with moving around a lot? Anything she might need particular support with?”

“Yes, I worked as a translator for the military, and we moved around a lot. She’s a smart kid though, and she picks things up quickly, I don’t expect she’ll have much trouble.” Not with academics anyway.

“She does seem pretty bright,” Mr Zaiden said, glancing over to where Daisy was talking animatedly about the animals display from last semester with Miss Rachel “how are her reading, writing and maths?”

“She’s pretty good at English and Russian, and she can write a very little Spanish, but her handwriting is pretty terrible in all of them. She’s more patchy with maths, we’ve kind of jumped around with topics. We haven’t really followed any kind of program.”

Mr Zaiden’s eyes widened “Sounds like she’s ahead of most of the class. We’re just starting to read in one language!”

Nat gave Natalie’s slightly nervous shrug “She’s a smart kid, and her uncles and aunt helped teach her. She liked to do something similar to what we were doing, so we tried to make it educational. She hasn’t had much interaction with kids her age though, so she might struggle with that for a bit.” She said, letting a little bit of her worry leak into Natalie’s voice and body language.

“Well this is a lovely class and she’ll have lots of chances to play with other kids.” Mr Zaiden said, and Natalie smiled, reassured, and Natasha tried to pretend she was reassured too. Somewhere in the building a bell rang, and there were distant sounds of the rest of the school arriving. Time to go then.

“Skye” she called, and waited until her daughter had come over, her face suddenly a mass of tension. She crouched down to her level and wrapped her arms around her. “It’s time for me to go now Pauchok” she said quietly. Daisy shook her head into Nat’s shoulder, and her heart ached. “I’m sorry, but I have to go. You know how to reach me if you really need me though don’t you?” Daisy nodded, referring to the burner phone with Nat’s number programmed in that was tucked into her bag. Her arms tightened around Nat and then loosened, and she stepped out of the hug, face determined.

“You’ll pick me up?” she checked.

Nat nodded “No late jobs this week, I’ll be the one to pick you up everyday.” She promised.

“OK” Daisy said, face still set in a look of determination, and Nat felt her heart break a little “Bye Mama. See you later.”

“Bye Skye, have a good day.” She said, catching herself from saying Pauchok just in time. She made herself wave, and turn and walk out the door. She breathed deeply and tried to convince herself it was no different from leaving Daisy with Phil or Maria or Fury for babysitting. It was only for a few hours. Daisy was going to be fine.

\---------------

Daisy watched her Mama go and tried to be brave. Everything was still so new and she wasn’t sure she wanted to go to school. But books and TV showed that normal people went to school, and Daisy needed to know how to be normal and she needed to learn how to be undercover and this was both. And she was Agent Daisy and she could do this. She was going to be the best spy in training ever! Her first mission: infiltrate Kindergarten. Except it wasn’t really a mission, and Mama said it wasn’t really undercover. But Mama didn’t like the agent game, and Daisy had a fake name and a whole list of things she mustn’t talk about, so _it was so_ undercover.

So Daisy tried to be brave, and she didn’t run after Mama. Instead she went back to looking at the colourful display with pictures of animals and their names in big letters. She sounded them out and told Miss Rachel what they were in Russian, and Miss Rachel looked impressed and Daisy felt a little better. But then there were suddenly lots of other kids in the room and they were loud and running around and they were all wearing different things, like on TV, and they all seemed to have their groups and there was too much going on and she didn’t know what to do.

“What are you doing in here?” Daisy jumped, and saw a boy standing by a table holding an action man and studying her.

“Mama said this is my class.” Daisy said.

“No it’s not. I know everyone in this class, and you’re not in it.”

“I am too” Daisy said, indignant.

“Are not.”

“Am too. I’m starting school.”

“Are not. You can’t start school now, you hafta start in Setember. You’re dumb.”

“Am too, and can too, and it’s September, so you’re the dumb one.” Daisy said, glaring.

“Don’t call me dumb! Miss, she called me dumb!”

Daisy spluttered at the unfairness of that “He called me dumb first!”

“Did not!”

“Did too!” Daisy said “You’re a liar!”

“Now Skye, Josh, stop fighting. Skye, did you call him dumb?”

Daisy looked angrily at her new teacher. She wasn’t sure she liked Miss Rachel anymore “Yes.” she said, sulkily.

“Josh, did you call Skye dumb?”

“Yes, but she is! An’ she’s not s’posed to be here!”

“Josh that isn’t nice. Skye is new to our class, and everyone is welcome here. Now, both of you say sorry.”

Josh looked mutinously at Daisy, who glared right back. “Sorry.” Josh muttered, but Daisy didn’t need to be an agent-in-training to know he didn’t mean it.

“тупица” Daisy muttered. 

“What?”

“It’s sorry in Russian” Daisy said, opening her eyes wide and doing her best innocent look (it worked on most people who weren’t an uncle or aunt. Grandpa Fury had helped her learn when playing agent. He said looking small and cute and innocent was her best weapon and to use it while she could.). It actually meant dumbass, Mama called uncle Clint it all the time.

“That’s lovely, but lets all speak English so we can all understand ok?”

“ok” Daisy said.

Miss Rachel moved on to say hello to some other kids, leaving her with Josh again.

“I don’t believe that means sorry.” Josh said.

Daisy just smirked “Miss Rachel said I’m in this class, so there!”

Josh glared “Well Skye’s a stupid name.”

Daisy opened her mouth to say it wasn’t, but Mr Zaiden clapped his hands, and all the other kids repeated the clap back and the words died in her mouth. This wasn’t on TV, she didn’t know what this was.

“Ok everyone, come and sit on the carpet.”

Daisy looked down to see she was standing on the carpet, and sat down, but then realised that everyone was going to the front of the room, where there was a multi-coloured carpet with big spots. She jumped up, embarrassed, and a few kids laughed at her. She wanted to hide under the tables, or run away, but she’s s’posed to be undercover and investigating, so she can’t. Instead she glares like auntie Maria does when agents ask dumb questions and marches towards the front. Everyone has sat down when she gets there, and there are only spots at the back left. She picks a blue one and sits.

“Welcome back to school everyone, I hope you had a good Christmas.”

There’s a wave of excited muttering, but Mr Zaiden puts his fingers to his lips and makes a shushing noise. “Remember, don’t talk when someone else is talking. Now, something good has happened already this term, we have a new classmate, Skye. Skye, would you like to introduce yourself?”

Everyone turned to look at her, and Daisy suddenly didn’t feel so brave. “I’m Skye.” she said finally, her voice small.

“Where do you come from Skye?” Miss Rachel asked encouragingly “You just moved here didn’t you?”

“Uh huh, last month” Daisy said, realising with a sinking feeling that she can’t remember where Mama said they ‘lived’ last.

“And where did you live before that Skye?”

“Uh, oh, umm,” Daisy said, fidgeting “the sky.”

“That’s dumb! You can’t live in the sky.” someone said, and Daisy wanted to go home.

“Birds do” she said in a small voice.

“But you’re not a bird” said several voices, and Daisy felt like crying. She wasn’t s’posed to talk about the helicarrier, and it was only the first day and she’d already messed up and she was a bad agent.

Mr Zaiden clapped his hands again, and everyone turned to look at him and clapped too, but Daisy still didn’t know how to do the clap and she wanted to cry. “Why don’t we all go round and say our names, and one thing we did over Christmas? Sara, why don’t you start?”

Daisy relaxed as Sara started talking and everyone started paying attention to her instead. By the time it’s her turn she’s worked out what she’s going to say and she’s feeling brave again.

“I’m Skye an’ I moved here over Christmas, an’ we painted the apartment ourselves an’ Mama let me pick howta paint my bu- uh, my room, an’ we painted it white with lots an’ lots an’ lots of different colour swirls!”

The other kids started looking at Skye with a lot more interest and admiration, and she felt better. She could do this, she could keep her cover. Even if she _had_ almost called her bedroom a bunk again.

But then they started lessons for the morning, and Daisy realised it wasn’t going to be that easy. It started off ok, Miss Rachel said they were going to practice their letters, and they made a big circle and everyone gave a letter and an example until they’d gone through the whole alphabet. When it it was her turn it was P and she said “Pirate” and thought of Grandpa Fury and giggled to herself. But then they practised reading, with lots of similar three or four letter words and it was only in one language and it was easy and she kept saying what it was even though it wasn’t her turn and one of the other kids shouted and Mr Zaiden told her off and she didn’t want to be in school anymore. It was boring. When Mama practised reading with her they sounded out the words in a book, and it was fun. This was boring. She ignored the words of the board and stared out the window and wondered when she could leave, and she got so distracted she missed her turn and Mr Zaiden told her off again and it wasn’t _fair_. If the lesson was _interesting_ she would have listened to it.

“It says tree.” she said, after looking at the board, and she started staring out the window again and missed her next turn too.

“It says see. Can I do something else? This is boring.”

The other kids burst into giggles, but Mr Zaiden and Miss Rachel frowned, and Daisy prepared to get told off again. She didn’t think she liked school.

\---------

By the time they got to snack time Daisy was frustrated and bored, and the other kids seemed to be constantly switching between laughing at her and with her. Miss Rachel and Mr Zaiden were looking at her differently, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. Snack time was followed with maths, and they all got given a worksheet to do, with different shapes in different sizes and colours. Daisy had had worksheets like this before, Aunt Laura had given her some, and she got to work happily. She matched up the shapes with lines and then she wrote the names of the shapes next to them, poking her tongue out as she tried to work out how to spell them in English and Russian. She was the last to finish and she forgot to sign her name and Miss Rachel handed the paper back and Daisy almost forgot to write ‘Skye’ instead of her name.

After maths it was lunch, and they all sat at the tables in the cafeteria eating. Daisy hadn’t eaten in the cafeteria on the Helicarrier much, Mama and Uncle Clint usually took food back to the vents, or their bunks, or a break room and they’d eat there. It was noisy, and it smelled funny, and the food wasn’t as nice as the shield canteen.

After lunch they were all allowed outside to play for a while. The kindergarteners and the first graders shared a playground, and there were already kids running around when Daisy and her classmates arrived. Daisy hesitated to join them, uncharacteristically daunted. She hadn’t seen so many kids together since going to the water park when she was four, and she hadn’t had to interact with them then. She dimly remembered a playground this crowded in a zoo, but that was a long time ago. She hesitated until Josh ran up to her, shoving her hard enough to make her stumble, but not really hard enough to hurt.

“Tag!”

Daisy hesitated, she never really play tag before and she wasn’t quite certain of the rules from TV, then Josh laughed at her from across the playground and Daisy surged into motion, bolting after the irritating boy. He was fast, but Daisy was an agent in training and no civilian was going to outrun her! She shoved him back and panted “Tag” and ran off again, missing Josh glaring at her back. After a moment he turned and went to play on the climbing frame, abandoning the game of tag that he’d been losing. Daisy, for lack of anything else to do, followed him. She climbed up part way after Josh who glared down at her and told her to go away. Daisy glared back and kept climbing after him, until he lowered one foot to stomp on her fingers. Daisy let go of the bar quickly before his foot could come down on her fingers, and she started climbing down again, tears stinging her eyes. She angrily wiped them away, agents didn’t cry just because someone was a meanie! She looked around the playground to find something else to do, and saw another kid standing on their own. Deciding that they couldn’t be worse than Josh, she made her way over.

“Hi, I’m Skye, who’re you?”

The kid didn’t react, and Daisy studied him more closely, noting the hearing aids in his ears, like Uncle Clint’s, but blue instead of purple. He was staring at the ground, scuffing one shoe against the ground, shoulders hunched and looking grumpy. Daisy ignored this, poking him in the arm to get his attention and then signing rapidly: _“hi, I’m Skye, who are you?”_

The boy raised his face, frowning fiercely, but that disappeared instantly when he saw her sign, and his entire face lit up, his hands rising instantly to sign himself “ _I’m Tobi, are you deaf too?”_

“ _No, my uncle is. And he taught me. Signing’s cool because most people don’t understand. It’s like a secret language.”_

“ _It’s only cool if someone understands”_ Toby signed, frowning again “ _otherwise they just think you’re dumb cus you don’t reply.”_

“ _Aren’t your hearing aids working?”_ Daisy asked

“ _They’re out of battery again. But it doesn’t always help when they’re working. There’s too much sound to sort through it all. So I miss things and then people say I’m dumb.”_

“ _They’re dumb.”_ Daisy decided, and told Tobi about Josh. “ _Mama said the other kids would like me, but I don’t think they do.”_

“ _I like you, you’re not mean like lots of kids. Do you want to be friends?”_

“ _I’ve never had a friend my age before.”_

“ _Why not?”_

Daisy hesitated, not sure what she could say but not wanting to lie to maybe friend. Uncle Clint said you shouldn’t lie to your friends, and Mama said trust was really important. “ _I’m not supposed to talk about it”_ she signed.

“ _Why not?_ ”

“ _Because_ ” Daisy signed, shrugging again, and Tobi thankfully dropped it. They spent the rest of playtime asking each other questions, and answering them. Daisy found out that Tobi had a mom and dad and an older brother and a younger sister, and their family had a dog, and his favourite colour was blue and his favourite food was smores. She told him that she had a Mama, but not a dad or any siblings, and that she had a cat named Nutella and her favourite food was chocolate waffles and she hadn’t decided what her favourite colour was, but it wasn’t black because black was a work colour, and it wasn’t red because Mama doesn’t like red. When the bell rang Tobi had to go to his class, because he was in first grade, and Daisy went back to kindergarten and glared at Josh as they stood in line to go back in.

The afternoon was as boring as the morning was, even though they were starting a new project and it was sort of interesting. But Miss Rachel and Mr Zaiden seemed determined to go reeeeaaaaally slowly and it was boooooring. When Mama finally came to pick her up Daisy was almost bouncing with impatience to leave. She wanted to go home and do some proper training to be an agent. School was boring! But instead of leaving straightaway Mama wanted to talk to Miss Rachel and Mr Zaiden, and they had to wait until all the other parents and kids had left. Daisy told Mama (in Russian) what they’d been doing, and about meanie Josh, and Tobi who was nice, but not in her class, and finally all the other kids had left. Mamma made her sit down and read a book while she talked with the teachers, but Daisy was just glad to read something interesting, and when Mama was done she said they could go and get ice cream, since it was her first day.

Daisy wanted to go back and do some agent training, but ice cream was a treat so she decided it was an acceptable alternative. They bought ice cream cones from a little shop, and went to the park and ate them, and then they both went to play on the swings. Mamma’s asked lots of questions about her day, and Daisy told her about being bored, and about Josh and Tobi again, and asked if she should have hit Josh.

“No! You shouldn’t have hit him, you did the right thing Pauchok.”

“Cus’ it would have broken my cover?”

“Because it would have gotten you into trouble!” Mama pointed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Daisy has some questionable priorities! 
> 
> Comments make me happy! (I read all of them even if I don't have time to reply)


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy's start to school gets a little more rocky, Natasha somewhat overreacts and Laura is not above blackmail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at me, actually updating on time! Also I decided to just sit down and write as much of this as possible this week, and while I didn't finish (which may have been a somewhat overambitious goal) I have gotten another 4 chapters written, so there will be regular updates for at least a month!

Uncle Clint called that evening, while Mama was trying to work out how to cook something from a cookbook. She talked to him for a couple of minutes, and then handed the phone to Daisy, who grabbed it eagerly.

“Hey Daisychain! How was your first day of school?”

“It was ok?”

“Ok? Did you make any friends?”

“I made one, he’s deaf, and he thinks other kids are dumb too.”

Uncle Clint snorted with laughter “That’s a good start to a friendship.”

“Uh-huh” Daisy said, grinning suddenly “That’s how you and Mama became friends isn’t it?”

There was a moment of startled silence, and then Clint burst out laughing. “Sounds about right! What else did you learn at school?”

“Undercover’s boring.” Daisy said, sighing.

“It really is.” Clint agreed, “Not that going to school is undercover! It’s not. You’re not training to be an agent!” he backtracked hastily.

“Did Mama tell you to say that?” Daisy asked suspiciously. The silence at the other end confirmed it.

“Mama’s burning supper” she said, changing the subject.

Clint snorted “Has she set it on fire yet?”

Daisy left her room and peered around the corner at where the smell of smoke was coming from “Uh-huh”

\------------------

Over supper (Mama ordered takeaway), Mama said that Mr Zaiden recommended she skip a year and go into first grade, and asked what Daisy thought about it.

“Do first grade havta do the alphabet?”

“I don’t think so?”

“Can I start tomorrow?”

Mama laughed, and shook her head “It will take a while to arrange, I’ll get started.”

It was a good thing that Mama got started on arranging for her to move to first grade because day two was even more boring than day one. Daisy started talking in only Russian or Spanish after snack time, just to make things more interesting, and got sent out of the classroom after a while. She examined the displays in the corridor, and sat down and did stretches, and decided this was more interesting than being inside. But Miss Rachel said she was being bad, and they were gonna have to talk to Mama later. Daisy said that Mama did lots worse to her bosses, but Miss Rachel said she was lying, so she dropped it. Good agents didn’t make people think they were lying.

She found Tobi on the playground again after lunch, and told him about it, and he thought it was really funny. He said that sometimes when he was frustrated he switched his hearing aids off and let the world go on around him without listening, but he got into trouble for it. Daisy said that she wished she could turn her ears off. Then she remembered that she was going to be moving into first grade if Mama could arrange it, and she told Tobi about that too. Tobi thought that was even better news, and said he’d introduce her to his friend Dan. Dan couldn’t sign, but he was really nice and they’d been friends since kindergarten. Dan had chickenpox though, and he wouldn’t be back at school for another week according to Tobi’s mom. Daisy told Tobi that she’d been sick with chicken pox too, and she’d given it to uncle Caleb because everyone assumed he’d had it, but he hadn’t. Tobi said he hadn’t had it yet, and he wanted to get it, because Dan said you got lots of spots, and he thought it would look cool. Daisy said it felt really icky though, and they should make spots with something else, so they made mud spots with some water from the drinking fountain and some dirt. Mr Zaiden looked horrified when he saw Daisy, and made her try to wash it off, but when Mama arrived later and saw the dried on spots she just laughed, although she did sigh when she heard about the Russian and Spanish.

On the third day, Josh came up to Tobi and Daisy to mock them, jeering that only the ‘freak’ would play with Skye, so Daisy punched him. She wasn’t sure whether she was more surprised that her punch landed, or Josh was more surprised to be punched. Usually Mama or Uncle Clint moved away before her punch could hit (sometimes they would let her hit them, but not often), but Josh’s eyes just widened a bit and then his head was snapping back and he was on the ground crying. Daisy told him that he was a dumb meanie and he shouldn’t call people names. Tobi just sort of stared at them, and then said a teacher was coming.

Josh and Daisy got sent to the nurse’s office, and then to the head teachers office. The headteacher, Mr Frellan, told them off, and gave them stern looks, but Daisy was too angry to really care. Why was she in trouble when it was Josh who called Tobi a freak! Anyway, Mr Frellan’s glares weren’t even a bit as scary as Mama’s! Even Uncle Phil could do better glares than that! How did Mr Frellan expect anyone to obey him on missions if he couldn’t look the part? Except Mr Frellan wasn’t an agent. Daisy forgot sometimes that most people weren’t. She kicked her legs in the air as she sat outside Mr Frellan’s office, across the corridor to Josh, and glared at him. Josh poked his tongue out at her so Daisy signed insults back. Josh glared as hard as he could, but he just looked stupid and he couldn’t shout without getting in trouble (Mr Frellan said they had to be quiet), and Daisy felt a little less mad.

But then Mama arrived, a minute before Josh’s parents, and she looked really mad.

“Did you really punch someone?” Mama asked in Russian, even though Daisy knew she must have already noticed the icepack Josh was holding, and probably already knew most of it.

“He deserved it.” She said sulkily, replying in the same language.

“Skye Laura Smythe!” Mama said, and Daisy sank down in the chair, swallowing hard. A full name was _never_ good.

“He called Tobi a freak.” She said in a small voice.

“Skye, you can’t just go around hitting people!” Mama said.

“You do!” Daisy protested, feeling the unfairness of this. Mama’s eyes flashed, and Daisy slid further down in the chair. This may not be the time to sass her Mama, even if it was true.

Josh’s parents arrived soon after that, and they all went into Mr Frellan’s office and talked. Josh’s parents were really mad, and shouted at Mama and her, but Mama didn’t even blink, and she wouldn’t let hem shout at her. She said Josh should be in trouble too for what he said, and Mama was good at getting her way, but Daisy still got in more trouble. She had to go home now, instead of at the end of the day, and she had to spend the rest of the week’s lunchtimes inside, and she got lots of extra homework. But Josh had to stay in at lunchtimes as well.

Mama didn’t talk much as they walked home, and Daisy tried not to stomp her feet. She didn’t think it would help. It wasn’t fair! She was training to be an agent, and agents stopped bad things from happening, so why was she in trouble for stopping Josh from being mean! Except agents also didn’t break their cover, and maybe punching Josh had broken her cover. Maybe that was why Mama was mad.

Mama sent her to her room to calm down when they got back, and Daisy sat on the bed sulking until she got bored, and then she did a handstand, and then practised walking around on her hands until she got bored of that too, and then she tried to read a book, but decided that was boring too, and then she started shouting to ask if she could come out yet. Mama didn’t reply, so she opened the door carefully and stuck her head out. She could just see Mama sitting at the table, her shoulders hunched in a little.

“Mama? Can I come out?”

Mama jumped, ever so slightly, and quickly raised one hand to her face, making a small movement before she turned around, and Daisy suddenly didn’t feel good “Are, are you crying?” she asked uncertainly. She didn’t think she’d ever seen Mama cry.

“No.”

Daisy frowned “You said lyin’ to each other’s bad.”

Mama didn’t say anything for a long moment, and then she sighed deeply “I know I did sweetheart, I’m sorry. C’mere.”

Daisy came over, and climbed onto her lap, wrapping her arms around Mama’s neck “Is it cause I punched someone?” she asked in a small voice.

“No Pauchok, but we are gonna talk about that, ok?”

“Are you still mad?”

“No Pauchok, but you’re still in trouble.”

“Oh”

“Daisy, why did you hit that boy?”

“He called Tobi a freak!” Daisy said indignantly.

“That doesn’t mean you had to punch him.” Mama said, her voice serious.

“Does too!” Daisy protested, shaking her head emphatically “He was being mean and nasty so I made him stop!”

“Daisy, it isn’t your job to make him stop.”

“But that’s what agents do! They stop baddies!” Daisy looked seriously up at Mama, and she saw her face change for a moment, as though for a moment she was going to start crying again.

“Daisy, listen to me. You are not an agent. You are not training to be an agent. It is not your job to protect someone, and even if it was, you didn’t protect anyone today. It is _not your job_ , is that clear?”

Daisy swallowed, that was Mama’s super serious voice she only used when she really, really meant something. “But I…”

“ **No**. No buts, you are not an agent. Is that clear Daisy Laura Romanoff?”

“Yes Mama.” Daisy said, looking down sulkily. “ _But it’s not fair_! I want to be an agent! And Josh was being nasty and he deserved to be hit!”

“ _Daisy!_ ”

Daisy jumped, she couldn’t help it. She was an agent in training and she was really brave, but Mama could be really scary when she was mad. “Sorry!” she said hastily.

Mama sighed again, and pulled her closer into a hug. After a moment she said, voice gentler, “Pauchok, who caused more pain today? Josh when he said something mean, or you when you hit him?”

Daisy hadn’t thought of it like that “But he started it.” She said uncertainly.

“But who caused more pain Pauchok?”

“Words can hurt lots and lots.” She said even more uncertainly.

“They can, but I think you know the answer to that question, don’t you?”

Daisy looked down again “I did” she said, her voice small. Her tummy felt funny. “Am I a baddie?”

“No sweetheart, but punching him was wrong, do you understand that?”

“Yes” Daisy said, feeling her eyes fill with tears “ ‘m sorry.”

“What else could you have done earlier?”

“Call him a name back?”

Mama made a sudden choked noise, and then “It would have been better than hitting him, but no.”

Daisy bit her lip, and thought what else she could have done. She could have waited until he’d said more mean things, and then he would have caused more pain, but Daisy still would have hurt him by hitting him. “Pranked him?”

“Better again, but no. Sweetheart, you could have told a teacher, and then they would have dealt with it, and nobody would have caused anymore pain.”

“Oh” Daisy said, she hadn’t thought of that either. “But I wanted to stop him.”

“You could have stopped him by telling a teacher.”

“But you don’t tell people when baddies are bad, you just deal with it!” Daisy protested.

“That’s different, Clint and I are adults, and employed as agents, and even then, we don’t deal with it unless we have to.”

“I don’t understand.” Daisy said.

“Sometimes Clint and I go on missions just to find things out, and we only hit people when there isn’t another way. Do you see the difference Pauchok, you hit someone when you could have told a teacher and dealt with it, when I’m on missions I only hit people when there isn’t any other choice.”

This wasn’t strictly true, and was seriously simplified, but Daisy didn’t know that, and her tummy felt strange again.

“I’m sorry” she said again.

“I know Pauchok. Can you promise me not to hit again unless you have to protect yourself?”

Daisy hesitated “I promise not to hit unless I havta protect myself, or I’m practising, or it’s really important.” She decided.

Mama sighed a little but nodded “Thank you Pauchok.”

“Am I still in trouble?”

“Yes Pauchok. You’re going to get no dessert for two days, and there will be no sparring or practising for two weeks until I can trust you to be responsible ok?”

Daisy felt her eyes fill with tears again, two weeks was a really long time. “Yes Mama. But Mama? If you don’t want me to fight, why do you teach me?”

Mama suddenly looked very sad “My life is dangerous Pauchok, and I am doing, and will always do, everything I can to keep you safe, but if something goes really, really wrong, and if you can’t hide, I want you to have a chance.”

Daisy sniffled, wiping the tears away “Ok. Mama? What if you get really, really hurt?”

“Then uncle Clint and auntie Maria and uncle Phil and grandpa Fury will protect you. But I’m not going to let that happen ok?”

“Promise?”

“I promise to do everything I can to come home safe, every time.” Mama promised, and Daisy gave a watery smile.

“Ok”

\-------------

Nat was honestly too tired to even think about trying to cook something. She pulled a couple of ready meals out of the freezer and stabbed holes in the tops with a fork. Her day had been going pretty spectacularly badly even before the school had called. The initial upheaval at the Triskelion from the leadership change had settled down, which of course meant that there the more subtle and underhand opposition to Maria taking over was starting. Which meant that the Triskelion was becoming a snakes’ nest masquerading as a loyal wolf pack, and it was Natasha’s job to hunt out the actual snakes from the discontents and the couldn’t-care-less’s and the actually supportive. It made sense to give her the job, she was one of Shield’s best (according to Maria, Natasha removed the ‘one of’ from that description) at espionage, and she’d asked to remain in the city for the next week at least. But spying on her own organisation still reminded her uncomfortably of the KGB and it left a bad taste in her mouth. She missed Clint deeply, despite the fact that they spoke over the phone at least once a day, but she was glad he wasn’t here. Clint would have been terrible at this, and he would have punched someone in the face on the first day of this job for the comments that were being made about Maria. It made him a wonderful person, and a great friend, but would not have helped with the mission. Although it would have been great fun to watch. And join in with.

She’d just found that one of the major department heads was actively manoeuvring to undermine and replace Maria, almost entirely on the basis that a woman couldn’t be trusted with command, when the phone call from the school came. In one sense it was a fortunate distraction, because Nat was nearing the end of the quantity of male chauvinism she could take before responding and Maria had said to identify the opposition without responding. On the other hand, she couldn’t exactly take a phone call while searching an office she really wasn’t supposed to be in, and seeing the schools number on her phone screen after pulling the vibrating (because she wasn’t a rookie and she’d switched off the ringtone before she arrived at work) device out of her pocket made her heart stutter in fear.

Why was the school calling her?

She replaced everything in the office as she’d found it in record time and booked it back into the vents (the Triskelion agents had yet to learn to be wary of those entrances and exits, and if Natasha was careful, which she always was, they never would.), across to somewhere she wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows being in, and called back. She was asking if Daisy was ok before the person on the other end even had a chance to speak, which was probably far too revealing, and Nat really needed to pull herself together. She was the Black Widow dammit! Hearing that her daughter was fine, even if she’d punched someone, was a great relief. It wasn’t until she was in the car driving to the school that she realised it was probably her fault Daisy had punched a kid. She was the reason Daisy had grown up around training and combat and missions. She was the reason her five year old had such a warped sense of normal that punching someone was a go to response. She was the reason her daughter was so enamoured by the idea of being an agent. The thought that Daisy had learned how to punch even younger than she had at the Red Room almost made her puke, and she had to pull over until the waves of nausea passed and she could compartmentalise the thoughts away. It was different. It was. She wasn’t Madame B, she wasn’t raising Daisy to fight. It was different. It was. It was.

If she said it enough times maybe she’d believe it.

By the time she got to the school Daisy and the kid, Josh she thought he was called, were out of the nurses room and sitting outside the head teachers office, both looking distinctly sulky. Nat established with a quick glance at the kid that Daisy had given him a pretty solid punch (doubtlessly using technique a five year old really shouldn’t have, but she tried hard not to think about that) but done no serious damage. At least that was something.

Dealing with the school, and Josh’s parents, wasn’t fun, but compared to the kinds of things she spent most of her missions doing, it was child’s play. Working out how to deal with Daisy was another matter entirely. She sent her to her room when they got back, and then she just sat down and stared blankly into thin air, feeling sick to her stomach.

She was never going to escape her past. She hadn’t even spared her daughter the results of her own blood soaked childhood. She’d at least had brief years, even if she couldn’t remember them, before the red room. Before she’d been surrounded by guards and guns and knives and blood. Daisy had been around them since she was born. Daisy had almost been _shot_ when she was only three months old! She hadn’t thought about that day for a long, long time, but the remembered terror was still enough to make her swallow hard. It was a miracle Daisy had even made it to age five with a mother like Natasha.

Not that she was much of a mother. What kind of mother let her daughter play on obstacle courses like they were climbing frames? Or watch agents training and sparring? Or stitched themselves up where their toddler could see? Or kept knives and guns in a cupboard (a high up and locked cupboard, but still a cupboard) like they were random mugs? Every single book on babies, young children and parenting she’d read said that they were impressionable. What had she impressed on Daisy? To run towards danger like it’s a day in the park! To hit first and ask questions later! To prank and disrespect authority! She’d allowed her to continue her hacking hobby for goodness sake! It was no wonder all her daughter seemed to want to do was become an agent.

Daisy was five years old. Five. Nat hadn’t even entered the red room when she was that age, hadn’t even begun training. Daisy could throw a decent punch; could sneak around like a pro (well ok, like a complete newby in the academy, but still); could speak five languages fluently, sign one fluently and was decent at reading and writing two; she knew the basics of undercover and could more or less stay under it; she could run simple hacks and do basic coding (ok, nothing especially useful in the espionage world yet); she could use lockpicks and pick someone’s pocket (ok, that wasn’t entirely her fault, but she was the one who brought Daisy into the kind of environment where someone would teach her that).

She’d raised Daisy to be more of an agent, at a younger age, than the red room had her.

Tears blurred her eyes, and she let them, drowning in guilt. Her daughter’s voice behind her almost made her flinch, and she hadn’t been nearly subtle enough in wiping away her tears. For the second time that day she’d compartmentalised, shoving away her thoughts with brutal strength, and beginning a long, difficult, and exhausting conversation with Daisy. Getting her daughter to understand that she shouldn’t just hit people, that hitting was wrong, and that she wasn’t an agent was more tiring that she was willing to admit, not least because of how much of a hypocrite he felt. She distinctly remembered punching Clint in the face for stealing her handcuffs, to name only one incident. But Daisy, despite everything, was so much better than she was, and Nat wanted her to grow up untainted, better than Nat could ever be. She managed to extract a promise from her Pauchok that she wouldn’t hit people for little reason anymore. But somehow Daisy managed to extract a promise from her in return, that she would always do her best to come home safe.

It wasn’t a promise she was really sure she could keep. What was the definition of _safe_? Did _safe_ mean uninjured, or did it mean avoiding things likely to earn her life-threatening injuries? What did doing her best mean? Did it mean not taking a risk that could end a mission early? Not taking opportunities that held a bit more risk but the possibility of much more reward? Did trying her best to come home safe mean letting Clint take a fall she could take, because Natasha knew she’d break her word in a heartbeat if it did. She knew she’d probably break her word anyway. Even she could recognise that she took risks that others would consider reckless as a matter of course. Just because she wasn’t quite as reckless as Clint (although it was a narrow gap some missions) didn’t mean she had quite the same sense of self preservation that most people were encouraged to have. She was trained to put the mission first, to put it above everything else and, aside from Daisy and Clint shaped exceptions, she’d held to that training. She knew herself well enough to know she shouldn’t have made that promise.

Her phone rang while she was still stabbing the ready meals, the screen lighting up as her ringtone started. She’d abandoned it on the table, and Daisy looked up from her worksheet, her face lighting up.

“It’s Uncle Clint!”

“You can answer it Pauchok” Nat said, dredging up a smile for her daughter that she hoped didn’t look as tired as it felt. “Put it on speaker.”

Daisy did, reaching for the phone and pressing buttons, “Hi Uncle Clint!”

“Hey Daisychain! How was your third day of school?”

“Umm” said Daisy.

Nat spun the dial on the microwave and walked over to the table “Another kid called her friend a freak, so she punched him.”

“That’s my girl!”

“ _CLINT”_ Nat snapped, echoed by Laura’s more distant voice.

“Er, I mean, umm, that was very bad and you shouldn’t hit people?”

Nat barely held in her groan. There was a brief scuffling sound, and then Laura’s voice became much less distant. “Do _not_ listen to uncle Clint Daisy, you should _not_ hit people.”

“I know” Daisy said miserably, “I’m in lotsa trouble.”

“Did you get suspended?” Laura asked, her voice worried.

“Nah, they wouldn’t suspend a little kid. Would they?” Clint said, suddenly sounding rather less sure.

“I was asked to take her home early, but she hasn’t been officially suspended, although it certainly doesn’t look good given it’s only her third day.” Nat said, as Daisy continued to look rather miserable.

There was a slight pause, and either she wasn’t hiding her exhaustion as well as she thought or Clint and Laura knew her too well, because they asked in identical too-casual voices’ “How’re you doing?”

“I’m doing great, haven’t set any cooking on fire in almost 48 hours.” There was a pregnant, disbelieving pause, and Nat hastily changed the subject “Pauchok, why don’t you tell Auntie Laura and Uncle Clint about your worksheet?”

Daisy brightened visibly, and launched into a description, and Laura and Clint mercifully allowed it, but Nat knew the phone would be ringing again later, once Daisy was in bed. She’d deal with that later.

\----------------

In the event, she ignored the ringing phone. Daisy was in bed and asleep, and she was in the study, going through lists of Triskelion personnel and trying to work out which malcontents connected and who might have been influenced by them. She saw her phone screen light up again, Clint’s number showing, and almost reached for it. But Clint would probably make her talk, and she didn’t want to. She was perfectly content to shove her feelings into the ‘deal with another day’ pile, and from there into the ‘someday’ pile and then the ‘never’ pile. She let the call ring out (well, buzz out, she’d switched her phone back to vibrate after Daisy went to bed) and went back to the paperwork, strangely tempted to make it into a paper aeroplane or draw stupid moustaches on all their faces. This assignment sucked. Clint called again ten minutes later, and then seven minutes after that, and then Laura called two minutes after that, and then she sent a text. Nat gave in as far as opening the text and swore under her breath. The text read ‘If you don’t call back in five minutes I’m calling Phil.’. She called back.

“That’s blackmail.” She complained into the phone.

“Nat” Laura said warmly, and only a touch smugly “I’m glad you decided to call us back. How’re you really doing?”

“I’m fine.”

“Liar”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m sure you don’t.”

“You’re not going to make me.”

“Yeah she is Nat, and before you say it, she can, so why don’t you make this easier for all of us and just tell us what’s wrong?”

Nat muttered a few less than polite words into the phone, drawing snickers from Clint and a scolding “Language” from Laura, followed by a “Well?”

“Daisy punched someone.” Nat said, trying to ignore the sudden resurgence of nausea.

“It’s her first week at school, I’m sure they’ll cut her some slack.” Clint said soothingly.

“I don’t care about the school!” Nat burst out, “I care that _Daisy hit someone!_ ”

“Does she understand why it was wrong?” Laura asked.

“I think so, I explained it to her, but that’s not the point!”

“Then what is the point?” Laura asked calmly.

Nat didn’t answer for a long time, feeling exhausted and so nauseous she might really be sick. Finally she said “Hitting shouldn’t be the go to response of a five year old. I’ve raised her to think that punching is the way to deal with things.”

Laura started to speak, but once she’d started Nat found the words wouldn’t stop. “But it’s worse than that, she doesn’t just think hitting is how to deal with things, she thinks she _should_ deal with things. Daisy’s five. _Five!_ But she can communicate fluently in six languages, live undercover, pick locks, climb through air vents, pick pockets, do basic hacks, simple throws and who knows what else she’s picked up! I couldn’t do any of that at her age! Even the Red Room didn’t train four year olds! Even Madame B didn’t raise us from babies! I, I tried s-so _fuck-ing_ hard to be better, and I’m more of a **monster** than all of them!”

Her eyes were blurring with tears, and she couldn’t hold them back, and she was taking in air in shallow, gasping breaths, her fingers white around the phone.

“ _ **NO**_ _,_ Nat no!” Clint protested, “You’re nothing like them!”

“I’m everything like them.” Natasha whispered, despair coating her voice.

“How often did this Madame B read you bedtime stories?” Laura asked.

“What?? They didn’t read us stories!”

“And how often did they tuck you in at night? Or take you to the park? Or get you ice-cream? Or put plasters on your scrapes? Or braid your hair? Or…”

“Alright, I take your point!” Nat said irritably, but the words reached her, and the nausea was retreating. “I’m not completely like them.”

“You are _nothing_ like them Natasha, do you hear me?”

“I’m an assassin and a spy, we have rather a lot in common.” Nat pointed out, but she’d stopped crying, and evened out her breathing, and was beginning to feel enough like herself to be embarrassed about how stupid she was being. Skills she shouldn’t have or not, warped sense of normal or not, Daisy was happy and healthy. She’d never, and would never, know what it was to go hungry for days, or be chained to a bed at night, or forced to train until only numbing fear kept her upright. Even if she hadn’t exactly given her Pauchok a normal life, she had done her best to take care of her.

“As a parent,” Laura said, exasperation showing in her tone “you aren’t raising Daisy anything like you were raised.”

Nat sighed “I know, I just, I forgot.” She finished lamely.

“We all have bad days Nat, it’s ok to still be affected by your past.”

“Mmmm” Nat said, concomitantly. Her past always haunted her, some days were just worse than others.

“Nat?” Clint interjected “You should get some sleep, you sound exhausted.”

“I’ve still got work to do.”

“Will anyone die or be seriously hurt if it isn’t done tonight?”

“No” she admitted.

“Then go to bed.” Laura and Clint said together.

“Bossy” she muttered into the phone, although she slightly ruined the effect by yawning. Clint snickered again. Laura kept tactfully quiet. She looked down at her paperwork to find that she had actually doodled a few moustaches on the photos, and admitted she should possibly call it a night. “Alright, I’m going.” She caved.

“Good.” Clint said

“Sleep well” Laura said, less smugly.

“Poke Clint for me would you?”

“Hey! That’s mean…ow! Hey, you’re supposed to be on my side!”

Nat swallowed her chuckle, “Clint, Laura?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.” She said, and hung up before either of them could respond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got to admit my favourite bit of this chapter is Clint's reaction to hearing that Daisy punched someone!! 
> 
> Comments make me very happy :-)


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Nat may be be the best influence on those around them...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is now longer than SC+FFF!!!! Which is kind of amusing given I started this story with the intention to write a fairly short, maybe 20 thousand words, story looking at what it would have been like if Nat got to raise Daisy, and now it's longer than the first story and still not finished!
> 
> I hope you enjoy

She managed to fall asleep in her own bed, which was lucky because her dreams were full of Daisy in the red room, and she woke up several times tangled in the duvet and covered in sweat. She gave up on sleep entirely around 3am, and resigned herself to being exhausted. By the time Daisy needed to be up she’d done the work she hadn’t done the night before, done a small training session, and used make-up to hide the exhaustion on her face.

She hid her exhaustion as well as she could from Daisy as they ate breakfast, and then she walked her to school and said good bye with a strong warning to behave. Her daughters comment in Chinese (yesterday had been a Russian day so today was a Chinese day), that she’d already promised not to hit anyone again, didn’t entirely fill Nat with confidence. She wondered whether most parents felt this uncertainty that the school would survive their child. Josh’s father shot her a dirty look as she left, and she gave Natalie’s apologetic smile (she hadn’t completely stayed in character yesterday, but better late than never right?).

She headed towards Maria’s office when she arrived at the Triskelion, but got way led on the way by one of the people she was investigating. For a moment she thought she must have been made, but then the guy asked _her_ what she thought of the Deputy Director. For an instant Nat was floored by the level of _stupid_ this guy had to be. She’d been transferred with Maria! Coulson, and by extension Strike Team Delta, was under her direct command! But maybe Strike Team Delta’s reputation hadn’t spread through the Triskelion like it had the Helicarrier. So she smiled politely at him, and gave a bland comment that she trusted her superiors that was so _obviously_ fake that he should have known he was being played, but he swallowed it, hook line and sinker. By mid-morning she was in a ‘discreet’ (they held it in a _break room!!!_ ) meeting to discuss the competency of the new head of the Triskelion. Nat kept her head down, made a few mild comments about how Agent Hill had only just arrived, and made a note of every face she saw and name she heard. One of the guys came up to her afterwards, and asked if she’d like to meet up sometime.

Nat gave a sweet smile and said “I’d like that. I was just heading to the gym, would you like to join me?”

“Sure, I could show you a few things.” The guy offered, his tone indicating he thought he was being very generous.

Nat beat him all over the mats without breaking a sweat and felt distinctly better afterwards. She finally made her way to Maria’s office and dumped her findings from last night on her desk and debriefed from the morning. Maria raised her eyebrows when she finished “And what investigative value did beating him up have?”

“None.” Nat said, not even attempting to conceal her smirk. “But it should teach him not to underestimate women.”

Maria snorted, “Did anyone else volunteer to spar with you afterwards?”

“They all seemed to get cold feet. Can’t imagine why.” Nat said, smirking.

“It wasn’t a bad idea though” Maria said, “the gyms tend to be busiest an hour or so after lunch don’t they?”

Nat grinned, seeing where she was going with this “We haven’t sparred in a while have we?”

\-----------------

Sparring with Maria in a crowded gym had been immensely fun. Nat toned her usual vicious fighting style down, conscious of the fact the point of this wasn’t beat each other into the mats. Which isn’t to say she went easy on Maria, because Maria wasn’t Clint, but she was still very good, and Nat wasn’t going to let her win if she could help it. But she and Maria dragged it out, flipping, dodging and rolling, trading slightly less forceful blows that they usually would and showing off. When Nat finally pinned Maria they were both panting and sweaty. Maria tapped out, and they climbed to their feet.

“Again, or you want to switch partners?” Maria asked, as if they hadn’t planned it. They switched partners by the simple method of Maria marching up to a pair of guys sparring and telling them to swap. By the time Nat had to go she and Maria between them had been through seven sparring partners, and Nat hoped there would be less agents doubting Maria. True respect would only come over time, as Maria proved herself as a mission leader, but she’d shown that her fighting reputation was accurate at least, which would make people more likely to trust her reputation as a leader. It was only as Nat was driving out of the car park that she guiltily remembered telling Daisy that she only hit when absolutely necessary and realised it was a rather good thing Daisy didn’t know how thinly she stretched the definition of necessary some days.

She picked Daisy up from school to find that her daughter had managed to get both glue and glitter in her hair but had at least not hit anyone. She had also made Nat a picture of three adults and a child (recognisable as her, Laura and Clint only by the red hair, the bow and context) watching fireworks (glitter) explode across the sky. Daisy beamed proudly as she handed it to her, “Can we put it on the wall?” she asked in Mandarin.

“We can put it on the fridge.” Nat said, because apparently that was what most parents did, rather than using their child’s drawings as wallpaper. “Did you do this all by yourself?!”

Daisy nodded proudly, and Nat smiled back at her, feeling her exhaustion fade slightly under her daughter’s enthusiasm. They bought some fridge magnets on the way back to the apartment and talked about what they might try to make for supper. Nat shoved her key in the lock when they arrived and turned it, automatically scanning her thumb and reaching out to catch the little ball bearing balanced in the niche where the door lock sat when closed.

It didn’t land in her palm.

In under a second her brain and body kicked into gear, bundling Daisy against the wall and yanking out a flick knife. Daisy’s eyes widened in panic, but she held still and silent, and Nat waited with bated breath as she heard footsteps approach the door, and then a confused head poke out. She released her breath in a relieved gasp, stepping away from Daisy as her Pauchok squealed in delight.

“Clint you jerk! I thought someone had broken in!”

Clint accepted Daisy’s flying tackle-hug and spun her around, giving Nat a sheepish look once he’d put her down. “It was supposed to be a nice surprise.”

“A nice surprise would have been knocking on the door _after_ we got home!” Nat groused, but she wasn’t really annoyed, she was too happy to see Clint. She went inside and closed the door behind them before she let Clint wrap his arms around her, but then she let her weight sink into his, likely saying too much about her exhaustion, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Daisy was delighted to have Clint back, even for a short visit, and she and Clint let Daisy drag him around the apartment, showing him everything. Clint did indeed tease about the badly put down carpet, but he looked suitably wowed by the painting on Daisy’s walls, and apparently Nat hadn’t botched the assembling of the furniture too badly. Nat made one of the dishes she could actually make with (reasonably) low chances of something going wrong, and Clint made scrambled eggs to go with it, and they ate chilli and eggs on thick slices of bread (because neither Clint nor Nat had gotten the hang of rice yet) and giggled over the odd meal. Clint helped Daisy with her homework, and then with bath time, and Nat read her a bedtime story and stayed until she fell asleep before she snuck out, and only then did they curl up on the couch and Nat asked what Clint was doing in DC.

“ _We were worried”_ Clint signed.

“ _Laura is six months pregnant birdbrain, you should be with her_.”

“ _She said I should come.”_

“ _Are you sure that wasn’t just to stop your mollycoddling?_ ” Nat asked, smirking.

Clint glared “ _Hey, I’m not that bad!”_

Nat didn’t dignify that with a response, and Clint flushed “ _I’ve eased off_ ” he amended.

Nat snorted, “ _Why are you here?_ ” she asked again “ _You could have just called to check on me.”_

“ _You sounded like you needed me more than Laura does right now.”_ Clint admitted, and Nat sighed.

“ _It’s been a long few weeks.”_

“ _I know.”_ Clint signed, and they both lapsed into stillness, content just to be together, to just have each other’s backs.

\------------

Clint had flown commercial to DC, which wasn’t nearly as easy a journey as taking a quinjet but had a very important side effect. Shield had no idea Clint was in DC. And he’d decided that Nat needed cheering up.

They mutually decided to leave Maria alone, the deputy director having far too much on her plate for either of them to feel comfortable pranking her. Phil however was fair game. As was most of the rest of the Triskelion. Maria said not to undermine her mission by punching one of the misogynists in the face, she didn’t say anything about pranking them. The plan was to sneak Clint on site (a feat in itself considering security) and see how many pranks they could set up before Phil worked out Nat wasn’t working alone.

The answer was four pranks against Phil and no less than fifty-seven against the varying misogynists, bigots, and general doubters that Nat had been investigating. They made it to almost time to go and pick up Daisy before Phil’s voice sounded in Nat’s comm, wearily asking when Clint had arrived.

“What do you mean? Clint’s not based here anymore.” Nat said innocently. There was pointed silence on the other end. “Last night.” She admitted. “And you can’t say they don’t deserve it!”

“This isn’t your mission.” Phil pointed out mildly.

“We’re investigating as we go.” She said defensively.

There was a sigh at the other end. “Don’t get caught.”

“When do we ever?”

\--------------

Clint stayed two days, spending most of the second distinctly less sneakily in one of the gyms with Nat. They took the chance to train full out against each other as they hadn’t in a while, and even managed to convince one of the strike teams also training in the gym to team up against them. They won, just, both coming out of it with what would become some truly impressive bruises, but immensely enjoying the shell shocked looks of the highly trained strike team members who outnumbered them four-to-one and had clearly _not_ expected to lose. By the time they left to pick up Daisy whispers about strike team delta had reached the gate guards, who gave them distinctly nervous looks. They refrained from telling the agents that they’d snuck Clint passed them without being noticed the day before.

They spent the evening playing games with Daisy, and Nat let her Pauchok stay up a bit later than usual given it was a Friday and Clint was heading back the next morning. She and Clint stayed up until almost 4am talking, finally falling asleep leaning on each other on the sofa, and moaning loudly when Clint’s alarm went off in the morning.

Nat and Daisy spent the weekend pretending they weren’t missing Clint and exploring the city more. They found a swimming pool and spent most of Sunday afternoon there, and Nat taught Daisy how to dive to the bottom of the pool to pick up pebbles, until her daughter decided to try to tickle her feet and the lesson devolved into a water fight until they almost got kicked out.

Two days into the next week the school finally got round to giving Skye some tests to see if she could move into first grade. Skye aced both the Math and English test and was moved into first grade with visible delight. By the end of the week Daisy was announcing that “me an’ Tobi an’ Dan are gonna be best friends for ever and ever and ever, just like on TV!”.

Natasha was over the moon that Daisy was making good friends her own age, and her fears that Daisy would never acclimatise to a semi-normal life calmed. By the end of the second week Daisy had gotten used to speaking (and sometimes signing) only English at school, had stopped looking like she wanted to hide under the tables when Nat left, and was actively looking forward to each day. By the end of the third week Nat was being pulled aside by her Pauchok’s new teacher who wanted to know what a certain sign meant, because it had spread from Skye and Tobi to Dan, and then to half the class, and she wanted to know why everyone was giggling when someone made it. The sign turned out to be ‘dumbass’ and Daisy (watching from across the room where she was supposed to be reading) burst into giggles. Nat almost burst out laughing herself, but managed to contain herself, turning a glare on Daisy who wilted instantly.

“Skye, that’s not nice, come and apologise right now!”

Daisy, looking distinctly more guilty, put her book down and did go over and apologise, even answering what the sign meant. The look of deep offence on the teacher’s face had Nat sending her daughter to wait outside the classroom, and desperately trying to explain that Skye had grown up living on military bases, and she was still learning how to behave in the normal world.

She got an incredulous look, and a “Soldiers call their superiors ‘dumbass’ in the military?”, his distaste for the word clear.

Nat, thinking of how she and Clint behaved had to hold back a snort, but in respect to the differences between Shield and the military (and the fact that most people weren’t insane enough to call the deputy director of shield, Maria ‘hardass’ Hill, a dumbass) she shook her head emphatically. “No of course not, but kids don’t always know the difference between how soldiers behave among themselves and how they treat their superiors. And this is still very different for her. I’ll talk to her about it. I’m very sorry.”

She gave Natalie’s nervous, self-deprecating smile, and the teacher seemed, if not happy then at least appeased. She did have a long talk with Daisy about respecting adults and about appropriate language, but she wasn’t sure how much of it sank in, and how much Daisy just thought it was part of being undercover. Hopefully, at some point, she would absorb and adapt to how normal people interacted, as opposed to how Clint and herself (who she was increasingly realising were terrible role models) interacted. Clint thought it was hilarious, Phil sighed but was visibly amused. Maria said it served her right, and then flushed when Nat said grumpily that she’d be sure to tell the school who Daisy had learned to swear off.

Halfway through week four Nat had to go on mission. She’d been lucky to get as long as she had without needing to leave the city, but she was still grouchy about leaving. She hugged Daisy tightly goodbye in the morning, and promised that Phil or Maria would be picking her up in the evening, and reminded her that their names were supposed to be Josh and Annie Charts, and they were married. She caught a brief glimpse of the worried look on Daisy’s teachers face as her daughter entered the classroom still giggling and had to stifle her own laugh. Her daughter really was a force of nature.

She met Clint in the field, both of them relieved to get going again. Although neither had admitted it to their respective housemates, they had both been going stir crazy. Nat had been doing all kinds of surveillance on the Triskelion (which was mercifully beginning to settle down and trust Hill) and training, and monitoring threats through her contacts, but none of that compared to having an actual mission. Clint had only had DIY work to do on the farm, and had been slowly driving Laura crazy. Nat had found a text from Laura when putting her phone away before the op.

‘Please, please, for my sanity, don’t send Clint back before he’s worked off some energy’

Nat snorted, texting back ‘Are you asking me to get your husband into a fight?’

The reply was fairly instant ‘No!’ followed after a short pause with ‘Maybe?’ and ‘Only a little one.’

Nat choked laughing ‘How insane is he driving you?’

‘I’ve taken to hiding the car keys and making up weird cravings so he has to run 20 miles to the mall and back and leave me ALONE for a few hours.’

Nat winced ‘I’ll make sure to make sure to spar with him at least before I send him back.’

‘THANK YOU’

‘What are sister-in-laws for if not to take your husband for walkies ;-)?’

‘LOL. Stay safe out there.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Love you Nat.’

Nat blinked down at the phone, startled even though it had happened before. Her fingers hovered over the keys, almost sending the message back, but she couldn’t quite manage it.

‘Look after yourself. I’ll watch Clint’s 6.’

She switched the phone off and shoved it in her locker before Laura could reply, and finished checking her gear before she got on the quinjet. She’d check it when she got back, which hopefully wouldn’t be more than a few days, if all went to plan.

\----------

Daisy tried not to look sad when she said goodbye to Mama. She knew that she had to go, and Mama said it would only be for a few days, but she’d enjoyed having her Mama there all the time, and she wished she didn’t have to. Dan asked what was wrong while they worked on their colouring sheets. They were funny math sheets, with pictures divided up into lots of little boxes with math problems in them, and you had to colour them according to the answer. If they got it all right it would make a picture, but the math wasn’t too hard, so they could talk at the same time.

“Mama’s going away again.” Daisy answered.

“Onna business trip? My Dad does that sometimes.”

“Uh-huh, she goes to translate for people. It’s important.” Daisy said, colouring in a red box and then swapping for blue.

“Where’s she going?” Tobi asked, looking up from his own work to watch her lips move.  
  


“I dunno” Daisy said.

“When’s she gonna be back then?”

“I dunno” Daisy said again, colouring in a blue square miserably. “Maybe a few days, but sometimes it takes longer than she says it will.”

“Don’t look sad” the fourth kid at their table, Millie, said, looking up “When my mum goes away dad lets us pick what we wanna eat and have extra long bedtime stories so we don’t miss her so much.”

“Skye don’t have a dad.” Dan said

“Everyone has a dad!”

Daisy didn’t look up “Mine’s dead.” She said in a small voice.

“Oh. Do you miss him?”

“I don’t ‘member him.”

“Who taught you to punch then? Tobi said you punched Josh real well.”

Millie frowned “Her mom could have taught her. My mom says that girls can do anything boys can do.”

Daisy perked up “Mama and Auntie Annie say girls do it better! Mama’s the best at punching, but uncle Clint’s the best at, at, at, ummm” Daisy trailed off as she suddenly remembered she wasn’t supposed to talk about what her Mama and Uncle Clint did. And she wasn’t supposed to call Clint that either, he was supposed to be called Uncle Caleb.

“Best at what Skye?”

  
“umm, at, at dodging.” Daisy said finally, hoping if she kept going nobody would notice.

The answer got some odd looks, but mostly they just shrugged and kept going.

“So whose looking after you if your mom’s gone an’ you haven’t got a dad?”

Daisy grabbed the subject change gratefully “My uncle Josh and aunt Annie, I like staying with them, uncle Josh makes cake without setting it on fire an’ auntie Annie lets me play video games for ages!”

Dan visibly brightened “Oh yeah, I brought brownies in to share! We made them for my sister’s birthday, but there were lots an’ lots leftover, an’ mom said I could bring them in. They’ve got chocolate chips in an’ chocolate icing an’ they’re the best brownies _ever_!! Mom said I could share them at lunch!”

Daisy brightened properly. Mama wasn’t very good at cake (uncle Phil tried to teach her and Clint a few times, but it hadn’t gone very well and Maria had banned them from trying again on the helicarrier), and they hadn’t had it in ages. Nothing, even Mama going on mission, was quite so bad when there was going to be cake later.

Lunchtime seemed ages and ages away after that, but the rest of the morning was spent playing with salt-dough, and it was fun. School wasn’t as difficult as lessons with Mama or uncles or aunts, and it wasn’t agent training but sometimes it was more fun. They were doing a project on castles and knights, and they got to do lots more arts and crafts and messy stuff than on the helicarrier. Daisy enjoyed the messy stuff, although she kind of preferred playing with computers. The art never really came out quite how she wanted it to, but computers were easy, if you put the right stuff in the right stuff came out. But it was still fun to make little knights with salt-dough. Daisy carved a tiny little hourglass on hers, and pictured her Mama riding around with a sword, saving people. She wanted to make another one for Clint, but she ran out of time, which was sad. Mama and Clint would have made the _best_ knights. They’d have saved _everyone_.

During lunch they all ate really quickly, because Dan’s mom had said they all had to eat their normal food before they could have the brownies, and Dan had pinkie promised. When the box was finally handed round they all had a piece, her and Tobi and Dan and Millie. Dan was right, they were the best brownies _ever_! Even better than uncle Phil’s or aunt Laura’s! They split the crumbs between them when they were done, and Tobi licked his fingers clean sadly when he was done “Your sister should have birthdays more often.” He said to Dan.

“No she shouldn’t she’s already annoying cus she’s older, she doesn’t need to be more older!”

“Why is she annoying?” Daisy asked.

“Cus she is. You know.”

Daisy didn’t know, and shook her head. Dan shrugged. “Sisters are just annoying, that’s how they are.”

“And brothers.” Added Tobi, who had an older brother and a younger sister. “You’re real lucky you don’t have any.”

Daisy wasn’t sure she was, it would have been fun to have a sibling to play with on the helicarrier. She wanted to say that she was going to have a cousin soon, but she wasn’t sure she was supposed to mention aunty Laura or the baby, so she didn’t say anything. The teacher came pretty soon to tell them they could go out and play, and they ran off happily. They played knights and adventurers until it was time for afternoon classes, and then they went in for quiet reading time. Daisy had brought a book in from home, one of their Russian books, and she settled down to read it happily. Mama had gotten special permission to let her bring in a Russian book. Mama said it was important she practice reading and writing in Russian, not just speaking it, otherwise she’d forget how. Daisy thought it was cool reading a book nobody else could understand. It was like having her own secret language, those were cool. She kind of had one with Tobi, only they weren’t allowed to use it. Mr Richard said it wasn’t fair to the rest of the class, and that Tobi needed to practice relying on his hearing aids. But sometimes when Tobi was having a bad day, and the sounds were overwhelming, he pretended not to notice when Daisy and Tobi were signing, and he’d learned a few signs himself to help.

After reading time they did some writing practice and they were supposed to write about their favourite game and why. Daisy wrote (in English, it had been a compromise, because Mr Richards wanted to be able to mark her work) about playing hide and seek because writing about playing agent would break her cover, and then she wouldn’t be a good agent. She wrote about playing hide and go seek when she was really little (Daisy didn’t remember it very well, but she’d heard the story a couple of times) in the air vents and under desks and in dusty record rooms, and Mama taking three hours to find her, and lots of other people having to help. She remembered to sign her name Skye and handed it in happily. They watched a video about knights in Europe hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years ago, before even their grandpa’s had been born, while Mr Richards marked them, and then it was the end of the day.

Uncle Phil came to pick her up, and Daisy jumped up to give him a hug, she hadn’t seen him in _weeks_! She missed seeing him and uncle Clint and aunty Maria and grandpa every day. Mr Richards said something about Mama saying that someone else would be picking her up, and shook uncle Phil’s hand, and asked to see some ID just to be sure. Daisy bounced impatiently, waiting for the adults to finish doing adult things, but when they finished they still didn’t leave, because Mr Richards pulled out her writing, and gave it back, and said he wanted to talk to her about it. Mr Richards said it was very creative, and she’d written it really well, and her spelling was getting better, but he said it in the way adults do when there’s a ‘but’ coming. The but was that he’d asked her to write about her favourite game, and that meant something that had really happened, and he said it wasn’t nice to lie, or to exaggerate.

“But it _did_ happen!” Daisy insisted, indignant. She _wasn’t_ lying!

Mr Richards looked really disappointed with her when she answered like that, but Daisy just stomped her foot, angry. She _hadn’t_ lied, and it _had_ happened and he was being mean and stupid and she didn’t like him anymore! Uncle Phil put his hand on her shoulder, and murmured in Spanish to calm down, and he took the paper off her, and glanced over it. Then he looked up and said. “She’s telling the truth, Natalie told me about this. She learned to play hide and go seek when Natalie was on leave, and then played on the army base. It took ages to find her and she was never allowed to play it again.”

Mr Richards looked suddenly very uncomfortable.

“I _told you_.” Daisy said angrily, but uncle Phil squeezed her shoulder, and Daisy knew that meant she wasn’t behaving, and she tried to look less mad. Mama had said it was disrespectful to shout at adults. Mr Richards didn’t look mad at her though, instead he apologised, and said he should have believed her, and he was very sorry. Daisy thought about this, and nodded, “It’s ok.” She decided “I accept your apology.” (That was what Millie said whenever someone said sorry. She said her mom and dad had taught her to.). Mr Richards looked happy, and Daisy felt better as she waved goodbye. Adults were silly.

“So, what did you do today?” Uncle Phil asked as he led her out of the school.

“We did math and we coloured at the same time and it was really cool! An’ then we made models of knights, and I made one like Mama an’ I was gonna make one of Uncle Clint too but there wasn’t time. Mr Richards said he’s gonna put all the models in an oven an’ that’ll make them last for ages an’ ages an’ ages. And then we had lunch an’ Dan brought in special brownies an’ we all had a piece an’ they were really good! An’ then it was playtime an’…Uncle Phil? Are you ok?”

Uncle Phil had stopped walking and was looking at her with an expression of utter _horror_. “Special brownies?” he croaked.

“Uh-huh” Daisy said “They were made for Dan’s older sister!”

Phil made a choking sound, and his face did weird things, and he made Daisy stop so he could look at Daisy’s eyes closely, and then he asked in a kind of squeaky voice like adults do when they’re panicking and trying not to show it. “What was in these brownies?”

“Chocolate.” Daisy said, wondering if uncle Phil needed a doctor “An’ marshmallows, an’ _lots_ of chocolate icing! They were _really tasty_.”

“And they didn’t taste, umm, strange?”

“Nuh-uh. Are you ok?”

“Daisy, did your friend Dan call them special brownies?”

Daisy thought back, and then shook her head “Nuh-uh.”

“Right, good. Right. Will you do me a favour?”

“Uh-huh.”

“When you tell your Mama about this, use those exact words ok?”

“Ok” she agreed. Adults were _weird_ sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coulson's starting to prank back! Heehee. 
> 
> Comments make me happy!


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life goes on and Nat and Daisy find some routine, even if their lives will never really be normal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've had a few weeks of both being less busy and my mental health staying mostly stable, and I've managed to get most of the rest of this story finished! I'm about to become a lot more busy the week after this one though, and I'm not going to have time to write for a few months after that. 
> 
> I'm going to try to finish and post the rest of this story this week though! After this chapter I have 10 more planned, the majority of which I've already written, and I'm planning on posting as I proofread and edit them, hopefully daily. Assuming I manage to get the rest of the writing done, I'll post the last chapter on Monday in a weeks time, rather than abandoning this story unfinished for a few months bc I'd feel bad doing that.

The mission, for once, went remarkably smoothly, and aside from a few bruises they both came out of it unhurt and on schedule. They were in a few decent fights, but Nat made sure to spar with Clint a few times anyway before he had to catch a flight back to Iowa. When they finished they returned to the hotel and packed, and then they sat on one of the beds, talking idly to pass the time.

“Nat, do you really think I can do this?”

Nat didn’t pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about, even though they’d been discussing the relative (de)merits of Helicarrier coffee compared with the Triskelion coffee. “Yes, I do.” She answered, turning to meet her partner’s eyes, showing how deeply she meant it.

“But what if, I don’t know, what if I drop him?”

“You’ve never dropped Daisy.” Nat pointed out, already pretty sure she knew where this was going.

“Daisy was one when we met, she already knew how to hold on.”

“Not when she was asleep.” Nat said, and raised a pointed eyebrow at Clint. _Say what you really mean._

Clint met her eyes for a second, and then looked away, picking at a loose thread in his shirt. “Uncle is different from Dad.”

“Clint, you’re not going to hit him.”

Clint flinched visibly, and his head jerked up, anger flooding his eyes. “I’d _never_!”

“Then stop thinking you will!” Nat said archly.

“I _wasn’t_!”

“You were.” Nat said bluntly, and the anger faded from her brother’s face.

“What if…” Clint said, before choking off, unable to finish the question. _What if I did hit him?_

“You won’t.” Nat said, “You’d never knock either Laura or your son around. Not if you get drunk, not if you have a bad mission, not if every fucking thing that could go wrong did. You wouldn’t.” _Trust yourself._

“You can’t know that.” _I can’t._

“I’m the Black Widow. My job is to work people out. I know.” _Trust me then._

Clint glanced up at her, and some of the tension eased out of his shoulders “If I ever…”

Nat sighed “Then I’ll kick your ass from one end of the farm to the other and back again, until you wouldn’t even think of doing it again. Happy?”

More tension bled out of Clint’s shoulders and, not for the first time, Nat wished she could bring Clint’s father back to life so she could kill him slowly and painfully for what he’d done. Instead she glanced at the time and stood up. “We both need to be at the airport soon.”

Clint got up too and grabbed his bag. “Thanks Nat.”

Nat rolled her eyes “Dumbass. As if the idiot who let the _Black Widow_ go because she had a kid could hurt his own kid.”

“Hey! This idiot is the reason you’re alive!”

Nat snorted “Please, I’ve saved your ass way more than you’ve saved mine!”

“No you haven’t!”

“Have too!”

They both froze, Nat internally groaning and Clint’s face gleeful. Clint smirked “And how old are you?”

Nat managed not to turn red only by a force of will “You wait until your son starts talking and see if you don’t pick up phrases from him.” She grumbled.

“I won’t.” Clint said.

Nat threw him a glare. If he was waiting for her to say ‘will too’ he was going to be waiting a _loooong_ time.

\-------------------

A junior agent picked her up at the airport and took her back to the Triskelion. He was young, and clearly terrified of her, and Nat gave him a toothy grin as she got out at the other end, just to see him pale. She went to Phil’s office to drop off her and Clint’s reports, but found it empty and tried her comm. He turned out to be in Maria’s office with Daisy, and she headed up the stairs, sighing at the fact that Phil and Maria’s offices were no longer within a two-minute walk of each other. It was stupid and sentimental, but she missed the Helicarrier.

She didn’t bother to knock before opening the door and earned a startled and then sour look from Maria, and a squeal of delight from Daisy. Nat smirked at the deputy director and caught Daisy’s flying hug, lifting her up and spinning her around.

“I missed you Pauchok!”

“Did you beat up the bad guys?”

“Yes I did! Did you have fun while I was gone?”

“Uh-huh. Uncle Phil said to tell you I had special brownies!”

“ _ **What?!?!**_ ” Nat choked; hearing Maria’s voice join hers.

She wheeled towards Phil to demand an explanation and was clearly radiating threat given the way his eyes widened.

“Not really. I just thought I’d share the heart attack round.”

“Thanks.” Nat said sourly.

“You could have warned me.” Maria complained.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Phil grinned.

Maria groaned “Those two are a bad influence on you.”

“Hey! ‘Those two’ just pulled off a very successful mission! And we have names!”

Maria opened her mouth to respond, but before she could Daisy tugged on her jacket “Mama? Why did you and Phil react weird when I said I had brownies?”

“Special brownies mean something else sweetheart.” Nat explained, shifting her daughter to her hip so she could keep cuddling her without her arms growing tired.

“Something bad?”

“They’ve got something you shouldn’t eat in them.” Nat said, tossing Phil a half-hearted glare because he could have _explained this_ rather than encouraging her Pauchok to give her a heart attack. Although, given a few of the things she and Clint had done, she might possibly deserve it. “What else did you do while I was gone?”

“Uncle Phil made pancakes,” Daisy said importantly “and we made smiles with blueberries and raspberries. And he wants to know why there’s a black mark on the kitchen wall.”

Nat flushed, maybe she should have let Daisy stay with Phil rather than having Phil or Maria stay overnight at the apartment, but she wanted to give her Pauchok a constant space. “Instant noodles should come with better instructions.”

Phil and Maria frowned, and Maria opened her mouth again, and then visibly decided she didn’t want to know.

“Nutella scratched the curtains, and she killed another mouse, and Auntie Maria tried to hide it before I saw but I saw anyway, but that’s ok because Nutella’s a cat and that’s what cats do. And Auntie Maria let me play computer games and do some coding, and I drew a castle in Turtledraw and she said I could ask you if I can take it into school, can I? Pleeeeease?”

“I don’t see why not.” Nat said, and Daisy’s face lit up like one of Clint’s exploding arrows.

“YAYYYY”

Nat laughed and adjusted her daughter on her hip so she could hold her bag open with one hand and reach around Daisy to blindly fish for her mission report with the other. She finally located it and dropped it on Phil’s desk “Do you need me to debrief further?”

Phil hummed, scanning the report “I don’t think so. I’ll give you a call if I have questions if you want to take munchkin home?”

Nat nodded “I do.”

Daisy looked briefly sad, but didn’t complain “Please can we have spaghetti and bol’nase for supper?”

“Ummm, I can boil pasta and the supermarket might have some sauce?” she offered. Phil visibly relaxed, and Nat glared. Her cooking wasn’t _that_ dangerous. Most of the time.

“And can we have a self-defence lesson tonight? Please??”

Nat nodded, and Daisy cheered again. She’d kept to the two week ban on lessons, but she had resumed them since, not least because Daisy visibly loved them. Lots of kids Daisy’s age did karate or judo or something, she was just teaching Daisy more efficient versions. It wasn’t _that_ unusual she reasoned. And she did have good reasons for wanting Daisy to be able to defend herself, it wasn’t just because Daisy enjoyed the lessons so much. She _wasn’t_ a pushover, no matter what Laura said.

_\------------_

Life went on and settled into a new kind of routine. Daisy began to get the hang of social interaction at school and became increasingly tight with Tobi, Dan, and Millie, but did occasionally still get sent home with notes like ‘Please talk to your daughter about walking on her feet rather than her hands at school.’ Or ‘Please would you have another talk with Skye about writing all her work in English.’ Or ‘Please would you reconsider allowing Skye to watch medical documentaries; while she personally doesn’t seem to be bothered by them, a couple of the other children in the class were rather upset by her description of how to stitch a cut, especially her comments about the quantity of blood.’. The notes were unfailingly polite, but many had an undercurrent of sheer incredulity. Nat was making a collection. ‘Skye’s’ teacher did seem to be developing a thicker skin for his new student being a little unusual though, as it wasn’t until early March that Nat got pulled aside for another conversation after school, to be told that Skye was acting extremely recklessly.

Daisy rolled her eyes and protested in Chinese “He said to get off the climbing frame, so I did! I was being _good_ Mama!”

Nat, with plenty of experience with her daughter’s climbing styles, asked “How did you get off?”

“I jumped and rolled.” Daisy said, as if it was obvious.

“From the top of the climbing frame?”

“Uh-huh”

“The one that’s two metres high?”

“Uh-huh. The ground has that bouncy stuff, it didn’t hurt.”

Nat turned back to Mr Richards and switched back into English “It’s ok, she went to a gymnastics class for a while and she knows how to fall safely. I’ll make sure she knows not to do it again at school.”

Mr Richards didn’t look especially reassured. Nat wasn’t sure if this was because ‘Skye’ was a little young for gymnastics, or if it was because they didn’t teach how to fall safely in beginners’ gymnastics classes. She wouldn’t know. Come to that, she wouldn’t even know if most people didn’t consider jumping twice your height ok as long as you rolled and were careful. She made a mental note to ask Laura but never got round to it.

During missions Phil and Maria would take turns (based on availability) to stay overnight and look after Daisy. She ended up spending more nights than anyone was happy with sleeping on a sofa in Phil or Maria’s office, but often neither of them could be spared, even to work from home, and there wasn’t much that could be done about it. The Triskelion was aware of the little girl that sometimes ran around the corridors, but Maria, Phil and Nat blithely ignored all questions, and agents eventually stopped asking them. Nat was far from happy about the fact that it was common knowledge a five year old fitting her daughter’s description was so often seen around a known location, but it was a greater risk to higher a nanny she didn’t know, and she highly doubted her daughter could stay in cover 24/7, nor did she want to ask it of her.

When not on mission she worked, for the first time in her life, office hours. And not very long office hours at that. Daisy picked up a couple of breakfast clubs, and three after school clubs which extended the time Nat could spend at the Triskelion, but it was still far, far more limited than anything she’d ever done before. Not that she didn’t get sent home with paperwork, or keep in touch with contacts from the study, or complete hours long workouts in the living room. Her duties at the Triskelion mercifully stopped including actively spying on her fellow agents (although she would always be passively spying on them, it was ingrained into her too well), and tended to involve more mission preparation and debriefing, training, and (despite her loud protests) training rookies. Her complaints that she thought she’d left that behind on the helicarrier went ignored, but she did at least get Phil to agree that she didn’t need to become anyone’s SO. She complained, over the phone, to Clint that the rookies made grass look like it didn’t know the meaning of green, and then used several choice words when her partner decided to laugh rather than commiserate. She did at least have the slight satisfaction of making sure that the lot of them were terrified of her. A couple of weeks after she started training groups of rookies Phil told her and Clint, after a mission, that he’d overheard a senior strike team leader tell his team to ‘Pull your weight in training or I’ll send you to Agent Romanoff.’. Nat didn’t even pretend not to be smug. Clint laughed until he cried.

A week later she overheard a level 5 agent say to their level 2 rookie “Do your push-ups or the Black Widow will get you.”, and the only thing funnier than the realisation that she’d become the bogeyman was the look of utter _terror_ on the level 5 agent’s face when he realised she’d overheard. She took to sneaking around and suddenly appearing near the junior agents, twirling a knife, just to watch them panic. Sadly, Phil told her to knock it off before somebody forgot she was on their side now and took a potshot and Nat reluctantly stopped, well, mostly, but what Phil didn’t know about passive aggressive notes in strange places wouldn’t hurt him.

As March bled into April Clint got pulled completely off active duty and Nat found herself occasionally partnering with Melinda May again. They worked together pretty well, despite the fact that May hated undercover, which was Nat’s speciality, and they got the jobs done. Nat achingly missed Clint’s eyes’ in the sky though, and more than once she forgot she had a partner, Clint’s absence making the ops feel like solo missions. The fact that May also tended to run solo missions and they usually split up did not help this, but at least May didn’t hold it against her when she almost shot the woman upon finding the safe house already occupied. Probably. It was hard to tell with May, she was almost as good at hiding her emotions as Nat was.

\----------

Daisy too settled into a rhythm in DC. She still didn’t like when Mama went on missions, she’d never liked it, even on the helicarrier when there were usually at least three other adults to play with. She missed Mama and uncle Clint when they were gone, and they came back hurt too often. Mama tried to hide it, and Daisy sometimes pretended not to notice, but she was good at noticing when Mama moved just a bit too smoothly, like she was overcompensating. And she hated it even more now they weren’t in the helicarrier, because she was never quite sure who would be picking her up from school, or if Mama would be there when she woke up in the morning. And she missed uncle Clint and grandpa Fury loads and loads and loads.

Things in DC weren’t all bad though. Auntie Maria and uncle Phil had them round for a meal at least once a week. Auntie Maria said that it was to make sure she and Mama ate at least one decent meal a week, but Daisy knew it was really because they missed them. And Daisy had decided that she really liked school. She hadn’t expected to, she thought it would be stupid and boring (no-one on TV liked school), and she wanted to go to agent-school, but Mama wouldn’t let her. She still wanted to go to agent-school, but normal school wasn’t so bad.

The best thing about school was Tobi, Dan and Millie. Daisy had once heard Mama tell Clint that you weren’t supposed to make friends undercover, not real friends, but Mama also said this wasn’t really undercover, so maybe it was alright.

Tobi was deaf, like uncle Clint, but his hearing aids weren’t as good as Clint’s special shield ones, and sometimes they ran out of battery and he couldn’t hear anything and had to lipread everything, but he didn’t let that stop him. Sometimes she and Tobi used sign language to talk, but mostly they spoke aloud so Dan and Millie could understand. Once Daisy borrowed the earplugs auntie Maria sometimes lent her (when auntie Maria was looking after her, but had to take a really important call that Daisy mustn’t hear) and wore them at school, to see what it was like for Tobi. It was much harder than she thought it would be, because she didn’t know if people were talking unless she was looking at them, and she didn’t hear people when they moved. Mr Richards thought she was getting ill, and she lipread him say he was going to take her to the nurse, so she told him what she was doing. Mr Richards made a funny face, and said she could do it for today, but not to bring them in tomorrow. Tobi made a really funny face when he realised, and looked like he might cry, but he said Skye was a really good friend, but that she shouldn’t do it again, so she didn’t. Tobi let Dan and Millie try the earplugs when they asked to though, and Millie said she hadn’t realised how strange it was to not be able to hear things. Tobi said he could hear some things without his aids, but not well, and smiled at them for trying it.

Dan and her also kinda had a secret language, but they didn’t speak it much. Dan’s dad was Chinese, and his mom was American, but he preferred to speak English at school. Dan really liked to draw, and paint things, and he said he wanted to be an artist when he was grown up, or a librarian, or an artist and a librarian. His pictures actually looked like what he was drawing, unlike Daisy’s. Sometimes, Daisy had to give Mama hints about what the picture was of. His first week back at school (Dan had had chicken pox at the beginning of the semester) he drew a picture of all four of them sitting at their table and working together, and he made Daisy just as much part of the group as he and Tobi and Millie, even though they’d already been friends for a year and a half, and she’d only just arrived. Dan’s older sister was in fifth grade, and Dan said she was really annoying, but they walked to school together and they seemed to like each other sometimes. Dan and Tobi and Millie said that was what siblings were like. Daisy wondered if Mama was ever gonna have another kid, and whether she’d get on with her sibling if she did, but when she mentioned it to auntie Maria she made a funny face like she was really sad and said not to ask Mama about it.

Millie was her only female friend, and she taught Daisy what a feminist was. Millie said her mom and dad were both feminists, and that boys could be feminists too, but most feminists were girls. She said that feminists believed that girls could do anything boys could do, and Daisy said she thought her family were feminists too. Millie asked lots of questions about her family, but Daisy tried not to answer too many of them, because she wasn’t sure how much she was allowed to say. Undercover was much harder than she thought it would be, and she didn’t like not telling her friends things. She tried hard not to lie to them, but sometimes she couldn’t help it, like when they asked what her Mama did or where she grew up, and she told them she was a translator and she’d lived in lots of different army bases. Sometimes she still made mistakes and mentioned things like Mama being hurt from a job, or climbing through the vents to prank grandpa, but she didn’t think they’d noticed too much. Millie wanted to be a policewoman when she grew up, and stop bad guys, and Daisy told her she wanted to be a spy, but it was a secret. Millie solemnly promised to keep it a secret, and begged her to teach her how to punch properly. She and Daisy hid behind the shed, where it was harder to see them from most of the playground, and Daisy taught Millie, but made her promise to only use it when she really had to because ‘Mama says you should only punch when it’s really important’.

Tobi, Dan and Millie knew lots and lots of good games. They knew all the ones Laura had taught her, like hide and seek and tag, but also lots of different versions of tag and lots of other games. Often they played pretend. They played knights and monsters until they got bored of it, and then they played policewomen and robbers until the boys got tired of being the robbers and wanted to swap, and Daisy proved to be too good at ‘stealing’ the collection of pebbles and pinecones and they got bored. They played at being horses and riders with skipping ropes, and sometimes they actually skipped too. Daisy had never skipped before, and Dan didn’t like it, but Tobi and Millie did, so the played sometimes and Daisy slowly got better at it. They climbed up and down the climbing frame pretending to be pirates, and Daisy giggled to herself when she remembered pranking grandpa.

Twice a week before school Daisy had coding club, with two second graders, a third grader, five fourth graders and ten sixth graders. It was really fun, even though Mama had made her promise to never, ever, ever mention hacking at it. They learned basic coding, and some of it was really easy, but Miss Etsan who was in charge of the club said that the basic bits were really important to know for later coding. Daisy had overheard Miss Etsan tell Mama that Skye was a ‘genius’ and ‘as good as the sixth graders’ at coding, and she’d felt really proud. Some nights Mama would let her do some supervised hacking, but not very often. Mama said it wasn’t a very good hobby, and she shouldn’t really have allowed it, but Daisy begged and begged and begged so Mama didn’t ban it entirely.

Twice a week after school Daisy had jogging club. She wasn’t as good at jogging club, because she got out of breath quickly and she was younger than everyone else and her legs were shorter, and most times she ended up falling behind, and one of the teachers had to slow down for her. But Daisy knew it was really important for agents to be really fit, and to be able to run without panting, so she pretended she was already an agent and the bad guys were chasing her and she had to get away.

Once a week Daisy had language club, for kids who spoke more than one language. There weren’t that many kids in the club, because not all the kids who spoke more than one language came, but some did. Dan came sometimes, and spoke Chinese, and Tobi came sometimes and signed, and there were a few kids who spoke Spanish, and one who spoke Russian, and several others that spoke Chinese, and various French and German speakers, and a couple of Japanese speakers. Daisy liked to speak to different people in different weeks, and sometimes she translated between different languages, because English wasn’t allowed in language club. She was learning bits of Japanese and German, but she wasn’t very good. The teacher in charge of language club was amazed at how many languages she spoke, but she told her that Mama was a translator, and she’d grown up speaking lots of different languages. She told the teacher about speaking different languages on different days, so she didn’t forget any of them.

Shortly after the beginning of April Daisy’s second grade class got their third turn at having the computer room for a couple of lessons. The first time they’d had a computer lesson they’d gone through several different things, step by step, and Daisy had almost fallen asleep she was so bored. The second time they’d been told to write a story in word processor, and Daisy had worked out how to change the languages and written her story in three different languages. This time they were learning to touchtype, which Daisy already knew how to do fairly well (grandpa Fury had insisted she learn when she first started using computers, rather than learn bad habits). She pretended to watch a couple of lessons, and she played a couple of the practice games, but she got bored quickly. She glanced at the teacher, and then switched screens, and got to work, keeping a careful eye on Mr Richards. It was good agent training to be able to keep track of two things at once. Millie looked at what she was doing and opened her mouth to ask, but Daisy shook her head quickly, gesturing for her to be quiet.

It took her twenty minutes of stop-start hacking to get into the school’s system, and then five minutes to find the bit that set all the backgrounds for the school. It took her another ten minutes to find a new picture, and swap it, and another ten to back out of the system, carefully erasing her tracks as she did so. It wasn’t a hard hack, and she’d done harder with Mama, but this was her first time hacking all on her own. Millie gave her more questioning looks when she went back to the typing games, but Daisy just giggled and whispered to wait. She pretended to be absorbed in the game, and tried to hide the fact that she was vibrating with excitement, even as she waited for someone to realise what she’d done. It wasn’t until she heard one of the other students say “Sir, my computer’s changed” that she let a giggle slip, and she quickly stifled it. Millie’s eyes widened, but Daisy shook her head, leaning over to whisper “It’s our secret.”. Millie’s eyes lit up with the joy of a secret, and she put her finger to her lips. Daisy clicked out of the game to show her the new computer background, and then put it up again, and they giggled together as they watched the rest of the class discover what she’d done.

Mr Richards struggled with the computers for a few minutes, and then told them to keep using the typing program and got another teacher to come and watch his class while he went to talk to IT. He came back in fifteen minutes looking frustrated and told them that it was a school wide issue and would be solved by tomorrow. The class burst into giggles again, Daisy and Millie most of all. It was the funniest thing she’d _ever done_ , even funnier than the pirate prank on grandpa!!! She couldn’t stop her giggling right up until Mama arrived. They’d gone back to their normal classroom by the end of the day, but the classroom had a computer too, and the background on it had changed along with the rest of the school’s computers. Mama took one look at the background that showed a laughing monkey hanging upside down, and big bold white letters reading ‘I’ve been hacked’, and her eyes turned stormy.

Oops.

Daisy suddenly remembered she wasn’t _allowed_ to hack without supervision, and that she’d promised never to even mention hacking in coding club. But it wasn’t coding club, and nobody but Millie knew it was her! But Daisy didn’t think her Mama cared about that. She tried to sink lower in her chair, but Mama crooked a finger at her, and she came over.

“Hi Mama.” She said in a small voice.

“Hello Skye, did you have a nice day?” Mama asked dryly.

“Uh-huh.” She said, voice small.

“Go get your coat and bag, it’s time to go home.”

“Yes Mama.” She said resignedly, knowing she was in trouble.

\-----------

Nat, although she was certainly not going to admit it to Daisy, thought the prank was amusing, but the lecture she gave Daisy on it still made Daisy cry. While Nat did think the prank was funny, she wasn’t in the least amused by the fact that Daisy could easily have made a mistake and been caught, and that would have raised far too many difficult to answer questions. She was also disappointed in Daisy for breaking one of the two serious rules about hacking. She’d thought Daisy had understood how seriously she’d meant that she wasn’t to hack without supervision. She’d removed a week’s worth of dessert privileges and banned hacking altogether. Her little Pauchok’s face had crumpled even further, and she’d asked through her tears how long for. Nat’s answer of forever brought on a full out screaming tantrum, and Nat tried not to feel like this was her own fault for not forbidding it in the first place.

Clint at least decided to forgo laughing at her this time, although they both shared a brief chuckle at the ‘I’ve been hacked’ background prank. Both Phil and Maria told her she’d done the right thing, and Daisy, despite some impressive sulking for an entire week, eventually accepted it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Daisy....
> 
> Comments make me happy


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy gains a cousin and Nat has a rough mission

April sped by remarkably quickly, and by late April Nat wasn’t the least surprised to receive a frantic phone call from Clint babbling about Laura being in labour and _what do I do???_

“Stop panicking and drive her to the hospital birdbrain!”

“Oh, right, yeah, good idea, right.” Clint said. Then “I’ll call you later.” He said, his voice starting to sound mission ready and calm. Nat decided it was probably not a good idea to tell him this.

Clint called again in the hospital, and then again a few hours later, starting to sound more frazzled. He passed the phone to Laura, who was walking around while the contractions started growing closer together. Laura sounded part-tired, part-relieved and part-excited, and moaned about how labour hurt and how she wanted to meet her son already, and ‘did you feel like this when you had Daisy?’.

Nat told her dryly that she’d panicked so much when her waters burst that she’d been certain for a solid twenty minutes that her child had died, and that her labour had probably been shortened by the fact that someone had tracked her to her safe house and she’d ended up in a messy, desperate knife fight with the man before she’d managed to grab a gun and shoot him. Laura gave a watery laugh that ended in a moan and told Nat she had a strange way of comforting people. Nat distracted her by telling her a few of Daisy’s recent antics, and reminded her that it would be over soon, and she could hold her son in her arms.

Cooper Barton was born just before midnight, and Clint sounded exhausted and deliriously happy over the phone when he told her. Nat told them that she wished she could be there, and that she’d come and visit when she could, and congratulated them both. Clint told her she was Cooper’s godmother and she chocked on thin air, and then spluttered and then finally thanked him, barely noticing the strange sense of déjà vu in the feeling of warmth that Clint and Laura’s decision gave her.

\-------------------

Early May brought with it another mission with Agent May, the first she’d had in a while given her recent string of solo missions. The op went spectacularly downhill on the fourth day, and both their covers were blown to bits. Nat heard May fighting through her comm, but had no time to pay attention to her, too busy trying to stay alive herself. She barely avoided getting shot, and earned what were sure to be some spectacular bruises in hand-to-hand fighting, and then found the whole world tilting and spinning around her. She realised she was screwed the moment her eyes saw the shard of white bone sticking out of her arm and realised it was hers. The pain and nausea hit her in a wave an instant later, and seconds after that anther assailant was on her. The last thing Nat remembered before it all went dark were hands pulling her head up ready to smash it down again.

She woke an unknowable time later, both legs and one arm tied to a chair, and endured the most excruciating interrogation since she’d joined shield. Minutes felt like hours, and she was no longer confident in her ability to tell how much time had passed. She wasn’t sure if it was hours or days, or if it might be longer, only that her arm hurt worse than she could remember anything hurting since the red room. She refused to answer questions and couldn’t hold back her screams when they hit her on her broken arm. She hoped, through a blur of pain, that Daisy never heard how she died.

But, somehow, she didn’t die, and somehow May was suddenly there, looking much worse for the wear herself, but still in better shape than Nat. She shot the guards and the interrogator and cut Nat loose from the chair. Nat moaned, and just barely managed to stop herself from falling, and May muttered something that might have been sympathetic or might have just been a distraction as she pulled Nat’s arm straight and splinted it. Nat screamed again but managed to choke out a thanks afterwards. May grunted to thank her when they were out of this mess and asked if she could walk. Nat could, just-about, but she wasn’t much good for fighting. Neither was May truth be told. She had a bullet wound in her leg that was bleeding profusely and had dislocated and put back in both her shoulder and elbow on her other side. They relieved the guards of their guns and ammunition, and limped their way away from the room Nat had been held in. They hid from as many guards as they could, and shot the ones they couldn’t hide from, but both were aware they were leaving trails of dripping blood, and their time was limited if they couldn’t get their comms working again. The hours that followed may not have been the longest or worst Nat had ever experienced, but they were pretty bad. They finally managed to find and take over a room filled with computers and barricaded themselves inside. Nat managed to take down the signal that was jamming their comms, and they got a message out, calling for backup.

Three hours later, Nat found herself back on the helicarrier, which (at the time) had been the closest base. Fury met them when they were wheeled out of the quinjet on gurneys and told Nat he’d make sure she woke up from surgery alone. Even through a haze of pain and dizziness, she could see the worry in her eyes, and she choked out a plea not to tell Clint or Daisy.

Five hours, two blood transfusions and some surgery later, the anaesthesia slowly wore off. She unhooked herself from the machines (after checking she was doing ok), and slowly took stock. She was black and blue with bruises, and the throbbing in her leg (and the chart at the end of the bed) said she’d fractured her shin, but otherwise her arm seemed to be the worst of it. Her chart explained that they’d decided not to put pins into her arm, based on her record for unnaturally fast healing, and Nat was grateful. Her right arm was in a cast from wrist to above her elbow, and she groaned aloud as she realised how long it was going to take to heal.

A doctor peered in soon after that, his nervous face indicating he wasn’t quite sure if it was safe to enter. Nat was tempted to scare him for the hell of it but she resisted and waved him inside, submitting to being checked up. Fury turned up before he was done, no doubt having asked to be told when she woke, and he waited until the doctor was done and leaving before asking “How do you feel?”

“Sore.” Natasha admitted “Annoyed. What happened to the mission?”

“A bust” Fury admitted, “but it could have been worse.”

“How?” Nat asked wearily, and Fury gave her an incredulous look.

“You and Agent May could have died.”

Oh right. That. “How is May?”

“Alive. She lost a lot of blood as well, but she’s going to be ok. She’s down the hall.”

“Good.” Nat said wearily. “I’ll pop in and say hello on my way out.”

Fury glared at her, and opened his mouth, no doubt to tell her she wasn’t going anywhere, but Nat didn’t let him.

“I’m not in any serious danger, and there’s no reason I shouldn’t be discharged, I’m going back to DC and Daisy.”

Fury gave her a look that would have sent junior agents running for cover, but Nat didn’t blink, and he sighed “You’re a pain in my ass Romanoff. Fine. But you check in daily with Triskelion medical staff, and if I hear you’ve been training before you’re cleared I’ll confine your ass to medical until you’re so bored you’ll beg for paperwork, is that clear?”

“Yes Sir.” Nat said, not planning on pushing her luck any further (and confident in her ability not to get caught if she did decide to train anyway).

“And you’re not flying a quinjet with a broken arm, I’ll get someone else to fly you.”

\---------------------

Nat landed back in DC mid-morning six days after she left. She made her way up to Phil’s office to debrief, and then let her handler fuss over her for a few minutes, scold her for a few more, and then tell her to call Clint. Fury had respected her wishes not to tell Clint or Daisy, but Clint had called Phil for an update and instantly heard from Phil’s voice that he was holding back, and Phil had had to tell him.

Nat groaned, but knew there wasn’t really much Phil could have done about it, and she’d just have to deal with a pissed Clint. So much for not making them worry when they had a new-born.

It was difficult to tell whether Clint or Laura was angrier at her, but they both took a turn to shout at her for trying to keep them in the dark. Nat briefly attempted to defend herself, and then took the route of least resistance, and just let them lecture her, before meekly promising not to do it again. She reassured them that she could manage fine with a broken arm, and had done so before, and changed the subject to ask about little Cooper and how they were doing. Clint spent twenty minutes describing how perfect and adorable his son was, and then fell asleep still mumbling about tiny wrinkly fingers. Laura reclaimed the phone to tell her that Cooper had had all his injections and was feeding well but would only sleep if being held and bounced. Nat gathered from this that neither Laura nor Clint were getting very much sleep. When she asked about this Laura actually groaned aloud.

“I never thought I could be more tired than I was after night shifts at the hospital, I was wrong.”

Nat made a sympathetic sound in her throat, thinking back to when Daisy was a new-born. She hadn’t really had much of a problem with Daisy refusing to sleep when she put her down, because she’d so rarely put her down, but she’d barely gotten any sleep between the mission she’d been finishing, Daisy, and keeping them both alive. The only reason she’d managed it was extensive experience with sleep deprivation, and the ability to fall asleep for five minutes whenever possible. Thinking of this she said “At least Clint has experience living without much sleep.”

“Clint” Laura said with some cross between amusement and despair “put coffee in his cereal yesterday.”

Nat snorted with laughter “Oops, remind me to tease him about that one.”

“On purpose.” Laura clarified.

“Ah.” Nat said “Sounds, um, efficient?”

“You can say it sounds disgusting.”

“It sounds vile. Even I have never sunk to those depths.” She thought briefly back to the time when Daisy was almost two that they’d pulled three missions back to back and Clint had taken two energy pills at once and the effect had lasted long enough for Phil to lecture them both about it. It was probably a good thing Clint didn’t have access to those pills at the moment. She told Laura as much.

Laura laughed tiredly “Probably. How long until babies start sleeping through the night?”

“You don’t want to know.” Nat said dryly.

“That’s probably true.” Laura said tiredly and changed the subject “Did you take as many photos of Daisy when she was a baby as we’re taking? Tell me it’s normal to take a photo of everything at this stage.”

“I didn’t take any photos until Clint started taking them. I was on the run remember? It sounds pretty normal though.”

“That’s such a shame, do you not have any baby photos?”

“Not really, but it’s ok, Daisy made it through alive and healthy and that’s what matters.” Nat said, omitting the photo she’d found in Hunan. It was tucked in her safe at the apartment, but she didn’t want to mention it. The photo felt dangerous, tugging at her gut with a deep familiarity that was ridiculous, but left her with chills up her back she couldn’t shake for hours.

“And so did you, that matters too.” Laura pointed out, before yawning audibly.

“Yeah” Nat agreed, because she still frequently forgot that, but she was beginning to agree with it. A therapist would probably agree with her, but she didn’t know because she still wasn’t being straight in therapy. She had a new one since moving to the Triskelion (and Phil would almost certainly send her to mandated extra sessions no matter how much she’d downplayed getting tortured in her mission report) and her latest trick was testing cover identities on the guy, a different one every fortnightly session. She was subtle about it, and occasionally repeated one, and she was pretty sure the guy hadn’t worked out she was pranking him yet.

Laura yawned, and she could hear Clint stir, and then take Cooper and the phone from Laura so she could nap. She talked to Clint for a while, teasing him about the coffee in cereal (efficient or not, that was just plain disgusting), and learning that Clint was taking more than his fair share of housework and baby bouncing to let Laura sleep and rest. Clint said that was only fair, because labour was exhausting for Laura (even though it was weeks ago), and she had to do all the feedings, and he had more experience with sleep deprivation, and offered to tell Phil a laundry list of things their handler didn’t need to know they’d gotten up to if Nat breathed a word of the imbalance in work to Laura. Nat pointed out that that would get Clint in trouble too, but that Laura was lucky to have him.

Phil dragged her off the phone when lunch rolled around, and made her go to the canteen with him for lunch (during which Nat refused to let him carry her tray and instead balanced it with one hand under the middle, and put it down whenever she needed to put anything on it. If anyone thought this was silly they were wise enough not to mention it.), and afterwards curled up on his sofa to nap until it was time to collect Daisy from school.

Phil refused to let her drive to collect Daisy (“I _know_ you’ve driven with worse injuries Natasha, but that doesn’t mean it was a good idea, or that you won’t get _arrested_ for doing it in America!”), so she got a bus, and then walked the rest of the way.

Nat was early and joined the little group of other first-grade parents who were early. She knew a few of them by name at this point, having mimicked the other parents and chatted before pick-up. She knew Tobi, and Millie’s parents best (Dan tended to walk to and from school with his older sister) as their respective kids often wanted to play together for ‘five more minutes, pleeeeasse’ before they left, so Nat often found herself talking with their parents. Generally, this was a good thing (not least because it gave Nat people to mimic when she wasn’t sure about something), but on this occasion it meant that her broken arm and the bruises flowering on her jaw and forehead (and assorted other parts of her body underneath long sleeves and easy to put on sweatpants) did not go politely unmentioned. Jennifer, Tobi’s mom, took one look at her and gasped “Natalie! Are you alright? What happened?”

For a second, Nat’s throat closed up. Fury and Phil had looked upset about her injuries, but they saw this kind of thing all the time and knew her well enough not to react. Jennifer did not, and the look of horror on her face made the events of the mission suddenly hit her hard. It had been a _rough_ mission, and she hadn’t been tortured in a long time. So for a second her throat closed up and she flashed back to the pain and the questions and the regret that she was never going to see her daughter again. But then the second passed, and she hastily compartmentalised, giving an embarrassed grin that fit with her character and lying smoothly “Accident at work, I fell down the stairs.”

“That’s awful! Are you alright?” Millie’s dad asked,

“Doctor says I’ll be good as new in a couple of months.”

“Months! What are you going to do in the meantime? You don’t have anyone to help at home!”

Nat waved the concern away, uncomfortable “I’ll be fine, one problem at a time right? And I’m sure Skye will help.”

“Well, let us know if we can help in any way.” Millie’s dad said warmly.

“Thank you” Nat said, touched at the fact that these people she barely knew were genuine in their wish to help (although, the more cynical part of her pointed out, they probably wouldn’t be if they really knew her).

“Actually, you can come around for dinner tonight.” Jennifer said.

“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly.” Nat started, inwardly alarmed, although she didn’t let it show on her face.

“I insist” Jennifer said “Tobi and Skye will like it, and I’ve been meaning to talk to you about a playdate anyway, and now seems like an excellent time, don’t you?”

“I suppose so.” Nat said weakly, and she hoped Daisy could keep her cover in a normal home without preparation before hand (not that Nat was sure she could help her daughter know what was supposed to be a normal home).

The gates opened at that point, and the conversation was cut short as they made their way over to the first grade classroom as the older children started streaming out around them. Grades four and up were allowed to leave when the bell rang, but grades three and below had to wait to be picked up.

Daisy’s face lit up when she saw Nat, and she felt her heart soar even as she braced for what was going to come next. Sure enough, even as her Pauchok ran over for a hug, her face fell and she skidded to a stop before walking over more slowly. It was an all too familiar expression (no matter how much she tried to hide her injuries, more often that not, Daisy could tell) and it stabbed at her heart, but she smiled to show her daughter she was ok. “Hey Pauchok, I missed you.”

“I missed you too.” Daisy said, “How did you get hurt?” she asked, the Slavic language familiar in her mouth, and indicative that she didn’t want anyone else to understand.

Nat responded in kind “I fell down the stairs Pauchok, but I’m alright.”

“You’re not. You’ve gotta cast. An’ bruises.” Daisy said, lower lip wobbling.

Nat felt her heart sink further. She knew she was more banged up that usual (and she knew it wasn’t just physical, even if she wanted to think it was), and she hadn’t properly broken anything in a long time (possibly not that Daisy would remember at all), and the cast was big and scary. “I know Pauchok, but I’m not in any pain right now, and the doctor says I’m going to heal up completely fine. And you know what Pauchok?”

“What?” Daisy asked, not looking entirely convinced with Nat’s soothing.

“Until my arm is all healed up, I won’t be going away.”

Daisy did brighten at that, but “I don’t like it when you get hurt Mama.”

“I know Pauchok, I’m sorry.” Nat said, feeling miserable.

“It’s ok, I forgive you. Did you stop the baddies?”

Nat thought of the clusterfuck of a mission they’d barely gotten out of alive “We got some of the baddies.” She said. “Oh, and we’re going to your friend Tobi’s house for dinner tonight.”

Daisy took the distraction instantly, her entire face lighting up “ _Really??_ ” she squealed, flipping back to English in shock.

“Really.” Nat confirmed, nodding to where Tobi and Jennifer were standing, patiently waiting for them.

“ _YAYYY”_ Daisy squealed.

“Inside voice” Nat reminded her Pauchok, but her grin was spreading across her face, relieved to see her daughter distracted and happy.

It was the worst part of her life, the fact that her job affected her daughter so deeply. She wondered if Clint would feel this way when Cooper grew older. The guilt at having to leave to go on missions, the guilt at not being able to give his son a normal childhood. The guilt that he would inevitably, at some point, start to worry that he’d come back hurt or not come back at all. Not for the first time, she wished she didn’t have to be an agent. But she did. Not just to wipe out the red in her ledger, but also to make the world a better place for Daisy. To make the world a _safe_ place for Daisy.

\------------

The Layeps’ apartment was bigger than Nat and Daisy’s but shared between more people. Jennifer and her husband Roy shared the master bedroom, while Tobi and his older brother shared another and their little sister had the smallest room. It was more crowded and cluttered too, with toys, artwork and bits of homework scattered all over the place, and unwashed dishes beside the sink. It was much messier than Nat and Daisy’s apartment (Nat had a lifetime in the military that made her keep things neat and tidy up as soon as a mess was made (and make it easier to tell if the room had been searched) and even Daisy’s room was rarely got properly messy, because the five year old had mercifully picked up more of her habits than Clint’s in that regard.) but more lived in, telling of family life and years of growth and love. Nat thought she liked it. Daisy didn’t seem to particularly care one way or another, vanishing into Tobi’s room after her friend with a distracted backwards wave at Nat.

Jennifer smiled after them, amusement on her face “They’ll be back out in a minute begging for a snack.”

Nat smiled back, the nervousness in it not entirely faked “Does Tobi generally have a snack after school?”

“Most days, would you like a drink? Tea? Coffee?”

“Coffee would be lovely.” Nat said, smiling Natalie’s smile and realising she had no idea what to do while the kids played. “Where’s the rest of your family?” she asked, trying to make small talk.

“Roy said he was going to take Jasmine out to the playground, but they should be back soon. James is going to a friend’s house this afternoon and getting dropped off this evening.”

“Ah” said Nat, and ran out of things to say. She mentally kicked herself. She was the Black Widow, the best spy shield had, undercover was her speciality, she _knew how to make conversation_. Except this wasn’t entirely undercover, just as ‘Skye’ wasn’t entirely undercover. Mercifully, Jennifer seemed far less nervous, and turned back round once she’d put the coffee on.

“So, tell me how you got the broken arm? You work as a translator, don’t you?”

Nat thought fast, deciding to keep it simple. She’d already said she’d fallen down the stairs, she just had to add a few details to sell the ‘accident’ part. “Yes, I work for a translation agency that does various translation work. Some text, some oral. I get sent on trips sometimes to do oral translation, which is where I go when I disappear for a few days. This one was going pretty much like normal until an intern left a box right at the top of the stairs and I didn’t look where I was going.” She gave a sheepish grin and tried to shove the still-fresh image of her bone sticking out of her arm – and the blinding pain of being struck on it – out of her mind. Compartmentalise. Here was not the place to fall apart. Besides, she was the Black Widow! She had had _much_ worse missions. Not for a while true, but it wasn’t like she’d never had to deal with trauma before.

“That must have been horrible” Jennifer said sympathetically. “I hope they’re paying you compensation. And giving you lots of time off.”

Nat wasn’t entirely sure if she did get compensation (she didn’t really keep a close eye on her pay, other than vaguely making sure money was going into her account), not for routine injuries that would heal, but it sounded like something a translation company would give so “Yes, I get compensation, and they’d give me time off if I’d take it, but I won’t.”

Jennifer looked at her in surprise “Why not? It can’t be easy to manage a broken arm.”

Nat thought wryly that bullet wounds were worse, but obviously couldn’t say that. “I can still do oral translation, although I won’t be doing any travelling work for a while. I’d go insane staying at home all day while Daisy was at school.”

Jennifer laughed “Now that I can understand! I took several months off work after each of my kids were born, and I was always itching to get back to work by the end of it, even with an infant to look after!”

Before Nat could respond, the sound of a key in the lock coincided with Tobi and Daisy running out to ask for the predicted snack. The door opening revealed Roy, carrying two year old Jasmine, who Nat had met a couple of times outside the school gates. Tobi diverted as soon as he saw his father, running over for a tight hug. Roy put his daughter down to return the hug,

“I love you Tobi. How was your day at school?”

Nat’s stomach clenched briefly in shock at how easily and casually the words were spoken. She had to forcibly bite back the ‘Love is for children’ that rose up, and not react. She missed whatever Tobi said in response but forced herself to relax back into Natalie Smythe when Roy looked up at her, his smile welcoming.

Nat went over to exchange pleasantries and give the same brief story about what had happened to her arm, and Jennifer took charge of the three kids, passing out a piece of fruit and a cookie each. Tobi and Daisy vanished back into his bedroom afterwards, and Nat, Jennifer and Roy settled into fairly relaxed small talk, while playing with Jasmine. Nat guided the conversation effortlessly towards their work and lives, and away from herself, and to her relief it went smoothly.

They made dinner between the three of them, Nat upfront admitting that she was a terrible cook, but offering to help chop things. Chopping things quickly and neatly was about the only thing she was good at in the kitchen (probably because all it required was being good with a knife), but she was good at it, even when she had only one hand and it wasn’t her dominant one. Jennifer and Roy both turned out to be excellent cooks though, as the spaghetti sauce they made was delicious. Daisy was clearly and obviously delighted with the food, and Nat admitted sheepishly that there were only really five dishes she could cook, and three of them were variations on casserole, and they got boring very fast. They lived off those five dishes, a handful of breakfast things she could make, sandwiches, toasties, instant meals, cereal, takeaway and frozen portions of whatever ‘Josh’ (Phil) made when he took pity on them. Jennifer and Roy both teased her good-naturedly for the admission, but Nat was beyond being embarrassed at her utter lack of skill at cooking. She personally thought it was a victory that she hadn’t poisoned Daisy yet.

All in all, the visit went very well, and Nat admitted gratefully that it had been much better than going home and putting a frozen pizza in the oven. The Layeps’ waved away her thanks, and insisted on giving her a lift back, which Nat accepted because she could walk the distance (although she certainly wouldn’t enjoy it, given the beating she’d taken on the mission), but Daisy couldn’t, and she was in no shape to carry her. She made a mental note to ask Phil what you did to thank people in this situation.

\------------

Getting Daisy ready for bed for harder than usual, with one arm out of commission, and maybe she was distracted and that was the reason why the question hit Nat so hard, or maybe it was just the question itself.

“Mama? Do you love me?”

Nat froze for an instant, and then looked at her daughter in stunned shock “Of course I do Pauchok!! Of course, don’t ever doubt that sweetheart!”

Daisy’s face had looked kind of funny, but it relaxed at that into something more curious “I thought you did, but why don’t you ever say it? Tobi says his mom and dad say it all the time.”

Nat felt something loosen in utter relief at the first phrase, relieved that she hadn’t made her daughter think she didn’t love her, only to freeze up again at the rest of it. “I-Pauchok I-that-um-I….” she cut herself off forcibly from stuttering further, and sat down on the bed beside Daisy, holding her good arm out. Daisy instantly climbed into her lap and curled into the cuddle. She laid a gentle kiss on Daisy’s brown curls and tried to work out how she could answer that question without ripping herself apart. She had a sinking feeling she couldn’t get out of this without at least mentioning the red room, and that was not a conversation she ever wanted to have with her daughter.

“Mama?” Daisy asked.

Nat swallowed hard, and loosened her grip on Daisy, allowing her daughter to draw back so she could meet her eyes. “Daisy, I love you.” She said, and it wasn’t the first time she’d said the words to Daisy, but it was the first time she’d said them with such a feeling of being skinned raw. Daisy was a child, and even if ‘Love is for children’ that still meant she was allowed to give it to Daisy. Even if Madame B had never meant it like that.

Daisy’s face wrinkled slightly up at her, not upset, just curious “I love you too Mama. Why do your eyes look funny when you say that?”

Nat wished with a desperate intensity that Phil or Clint were here to have this conversation with Daisy instead of her. But they weren’t, and that wouldn’t have been fair to Daisy, so she took a deep breath, and gently touched the topic she always avoided, especially around Daisy. “You remember when I told you that I was raised by baddies?”

“Uh-huh. Did they never tell you they loved you?” Daisy’s eyes were wide with sadness, and Nat had to choke back the tears that were stinging her eyes at the sheer _innocence_ of her daughter. She refused to cry in front of Daisy, she _refused_.

“No Pauchok, they never did.” Nat said, somehow managing to keep her voice steady. “They taught me that love was a bad thing, and I should never love anyone, or be loved. But they were wrong Pauchok. They were very, very wrong. But sometimes it’s still hard for me to say it.”

Daisy looked up at her, sadness and anger in her eyes “That’s stupid. They’re stupid.” She decided “They should be sent to their bunks and have to paperwork _forever_.”

Nat took a startled moment to absorb that and then barely stopped herself from bursting out laughing. This really wasn’t the time or place. “They should.” She agreed. “Daisy, I do love you. I love you so, so, so much. I’m sorry I don’t tell you that more often.”

Daisy bit her lip for a moment, then “You don’t have to say it if it’s hard. I know you love me.”

“Yes I do.” Nat decided “You deserve to hear it. I love you Daisy.” And the words still felt twisted and edged with fear in her gut, but they got easier every time she said them.

“I love you too Mama.” Daisy said, snuggling back into the hug. Nat kissed her daughters curls again and hoped that one day she could feel the wonder of those words without the edges of fear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Nat, Daisy is definitely getting to the age of asking difficult questions!
> 
> Comments make me happy :-)


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes missions are easier to deal with than life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Implied anxiety attack in the middle. Please don't read if this is going to upset or trigger you. I've indicated in the chapter in bold where to stop reading and start again, and I'll summarize what happens in that bit in the end notes. Look after yourself. 
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy it.

Phil, Maria, and Millie and Tobi’s parents were godsends over the next several weeks. Daisy helped massively, but Nat rapidly found that messily breaking her dominant arm, and having wrist, arm and elbow immobilised, was a _lot_ harder to work around than having very limited use of her left arm after being shot through the shoulder. The last time she’d broken an arm she’d been in the red room, and she couldn’t clearly remember how she’d managed. Not having a child to look after had probably helped.

Everything from laundry to the school run was more difficult, but Nat had been trained to adapt, and adapt she did. Daisy arrived at school the first day with her hair down and her sneakers held shut with duct tape because Nat couldn’t tie them with one hand and they were running late. It could really only get better from there. Nat managed to teach Daisy to tie shoes in the evening, giving her instructions until her daughter could manage it on her own (and making a mental note to get her the kind with Velcro next time). By the third day Daisy and Nat could, between them, get her hair tied back in a reasonably neat ponytail (braids were a little beyond them). By the fourth day Nat was doing washing up with one hand, by the fifth she was doing laundry (she may have used her feet to fold it afterwards, but nobody needed to know that). By the end of the week her left-handed handwriting, neglected since early childhood, was almost as good as her right.

Cooking however, was out of the question. Nat was enough of a liability in the kitchen with both hands fully functioning. She put together sandwiches and bowls of cereal, but toasties went wrong the first time and she elected not to try again. Meals consisted of sandwiches, instant meals from the supermarket, cereal, and the meals that Phil and Maria, and occasionally one of the parents Nat was friends with, made her. This is part of the reason they were a godsend.

The other reason was that Natasha found herself falling into genuine friendships with them, especially the Layeps. Jennifer Layep worked as an engineer, part time in the office, and part time at home. Roy Layep was a graphic designer, working mostly from home until Jasmine got a little older. Both of them juggled their crazy family life with demanding jobs, and Nat related to them a surprising amount. She found herself back at the Layeps for dinner again early the second week, playing with Jasmine again while Tobi and Daisy played in another room. James came out to do his homework at the kitchen table after a while to get away from them, working quietly until he’d finished his maths and then trying to do a handstand against the wall.

“James be careful, you’ll get hurt.” Jennifer said, casting a concerned look behind her.

“No I won’t” James disagreed, kicking his feet up to try it again.

“Maybe, but you will fall over, your hands are too close together and you’re not kicking off the floor with enough momentum to get your weight far enough back to balance.”

James stopped what he was doing to look at her with more interest. “How do you know?”

“Experience” Nat said with a shrug.

“You can do a handstand?”

Nat could have said yes, possibly should have just said yes, but didn’t. Instead she put Jasmine down, tightened her sling with a quick movement, and then braced her left hand firmly on the floor and kicked up, feeling her core muscles tense as she rose. James’s wide eyes and stunned face were extremely satisfying, even from upside down, and Jennifer’s gasp of shock was even more so. Nat held the position for a few seconds, then let herself fall out of it, flipping smoothly to her feet before she could start feeling the strain. Jasmine burst into giggles, and James looked at her in awe.

“Can you teach me to do that??”

“Please” Jennifer prompted, a little faintly.

“Please can you teach me to do that.” James parroted obediently.

Nat smiled “Probably not one handed, most people don’t have the strength or balance for it, but I can teach you to do a handstand.”

The next half hour involved significant multitasking as she talked James through walking his feet backwards up a wall to get up into a handstand, and bending his legs once up to balance, which holding Jasmine on her hip and at the same time feeding Jennifer some story about getting into the habit of staying fit while she’d been working on army bases. By the time Roy got back, having gone shopping, James was doing a respectable handstand against the wall, and dinner was ready.

The third visit they let the kids build a blanket fort in the boys room, and Nat found herself having a conversation about helping deaf children. She had very little experience with it but shared what she knew from Clint’s experiences (although she called him Caleb), and she didn’t run a mile when they asked what it was like raising a child on a military base. It was strangely freeing to talk about it (vaguely, with many details changed). The fourth time Nat invited them back to the apartment (just Jennifer and Tobi, but it was still a big step). She couldn’t offer them a home cooked meal, but she could offer them wine and juice respectively, and Tobi was wowed by Daisy’s room and adored Nutella.

It was a strange friendship (at least, Natasha was fairly sure it was a friendship, not just an acquaintance), not least because they had such wildly different backgrounds (although Jennifer didn’t fully know that). But they talked about parenting, and balancing work and family life, and about being women in male-dominated jobs, and raising kids who weren’t quite like other kids. Nat befriended Jennifer’s kids with the ability to sign, teach handstands and give shoulder rides, and Jennifer befriended ‘Skye’ through her and Roy’s skill at baking brownies. Jennifer insisted on sending her home with meals every so often, and Nat insisted on upgrading Jennifer’s laptop security after she told her one of her co-worker’s had been hacked. It was a strange friendship, and nothing like the instinctual trust she had with Clint (she could never fully relax, not when she had to edit every story to keep her cover), but it was a good friendship, and Nat enjoyed it.

Three weeks after she got back Nat got two phone calls almost back to back. The first came from a hyper-happy Clint, telling her Cooper had smiled at him for the first time. The second came from Daisy’s semi-hysterical first grade teacher, telling her Skye had climbed up a drainpipe and through a second-floor window.

By the time Nat arrived at the school Daisy was sitting outside the principal’s office looking sheepish and guilty, having evidently worked out that she’d taken the game of ‘tag’ a little too far. Nat did damage control with the principal, feeding him some story about gymnastics classes, and promising to talk to her daughter about safety and appropriate behaviour at school. She then scolded Daisy thoroughly about the fact that she should _not_ be climbing that high without a harness and it was _not_ safe, reminded her that most kids could not climb like that, and sent her back to class for the last hour and a half of the day. She removed dessert privileges from Daisy that evening to drive the message home (Nat didn’t want to think about what could have happened if she’d slipped and fallen), and when Jennifer phoned that evening to ask if Skye had really climbed up a drainpipe she flopped into a chair and moaned that she wasn’t sure her daughter had the slightest sense of self preservation.

Mercifully, having unintentionally gained far more attention than she wanted, Daisy decided to keep her head down for the next while, and life returned to normal, as much as Daisy and Nat’s lives ever were normal. Her cast came off the fourth week, to be replaced by a brace, and she was cleared for mild use of her arm. Nat had never known there could be so much satisfaction in activities as simple as tying her hair back. A week later she was cleared for training and left behind office work with deep relief. She dragged Maria out of her office and into the gym and they sparred until her blood sang and she felt less like she’d been chained to a desk for the past month. She spent the next two days going around the gyms, sparring with anyone brave or foolish enough to step onto the mats with her.

Friday brought with it a mid-afternoon missed call from Jennifer, who she called back after showering, and wandering down a rarely used corridor.

“Hey, sorry I missed your call, what’s up?”

“Natalie!” Jennifer said, relief clear in her voice, and Nat felt her stomach tighten at the implication that something was wrong. Had she missed a call from the school? Was Daisy ok? “Can I ask a huge favour?”

Nat relaxed a little “Depends on the favour” she hedged.

“So you know the company I work for has been working with a Japanese tech firm? Well they’ve emailed over scans of diagrams and designs with red writing all over them, and I think there must be a problem, but all the labels and writing are in Japanese, and I can’t understand it. I know translation is your job and you probably have loads to do but….”

Nat blinked, that wasn’t a huge favour. A huge favour was making a body disappear or something like that, this was nothing. “It’s fine,” she interrupted “I can translate it. Why don’t you and Tobi come over after school?”

“Really? Thank you so much!”

Nat grimaced, uncomfortable with the gratitude in Jennifer’s voice “It’s nothing. I owe you anyway for the amount of cooking you’ve given us, we’d have lived off frozen pizza’s and takeaway if it wasn’t for you!”

“Well thank you anyway. Oh, Tobi can’t come with me, he’s having a sleepover with Dan today.”

“That’s ok, I’ll find something for Daisy to do. I’ll see you outside school.”

“Yes, thanks again, see you later.”

“Bye” Nat said, hanging up. She stood in the corridor for a minute more after hanging up, wondering when her life had become so…normal. It was such a normal favour to ask, for help with some work. No putting out feelers about possible terrorist plots, no getting in touch with old contacts and possible enemies for intel, no disguises or secrets just a bit of translation. It was so…civilian.

\--------------

There did prove to be a problem with the designs, although Nat couldn’t claim to really understand what was wrong with them. Her knowledge and skill in engineering was restricted to getting car engines working, security systems and building bombs. Technology manufacturing machines were beyond her. Once translated however, Jennifer seemed to understand the problem, and set to trying to fix it while Nat started making chicken casserole on the basis that she might as well make their guest one of the few dishes she could cook (safely). She was part way through the preparation when her phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and glanced at the screen, recognising the number as Phil’s.

“Natalie Smythe speaking.” She said, indicating to Phil that she wasn’t alone.

There was a short pause and then “I need you to get away, we’ve got a job for you.”

Nat automatically straightened at Phil’s tone, recognising the seriousness “When?” she asked, already mentally pulling up the checklist of things she’d need to do before leaving for an op.

“Now.”

“ _Now?_ I’ve got a guest!”

“I need you to get away.”

“Sir I can’t just, isn’t there someone else you can send?”

“Not close enough and good enough. An unidentified group of seven has taken three diplomats and six civilians hostage in a hotel. We don’t know what they want or how violent they might be. We need you on this.”

Nat swallowed, that was bad. And it was, unfortunately, exactly the kind of thing that she was best for. She lowered the phone from her ear “Jennifer? Can you do me a massive favour? Can you watch Skye for a few hours, I’ve been called into work – an emergency.”

Jennifer thankfully nodded, and Nat gave her a grateful smile, and raised the phone again “Ok. Where am I going?”

“We’ve sent someone to pick you up, they’ll be with you in ten, get ready, I’ll brief you properly on route.”

“Copy that.” Nat said, and hung up.

She turned to Jennifer, who was looking a little worried “What’s the emergency?”

“Nothing I can’t handle” Nat said with a smile, “thank you so much for this.”

Jennifer waved it away, and Nat gave her one last smile before she vanished into her room. She stripped off her comfortable sweater and swapped it for the leather jacket with the wires sewn into the sleeves, and slid her Widow’s Bites around her wrists, attaching the wires and battery efficiently, but not switching them on. She swapped trousers for a pair with slits inside the pockets, and strapped knives to her thighs, and grabbed the boots with lockpicks hidden in the soles and added another knife to one of them. She fastened a bead necklace, with various drugs inside, around her neck, stuck her comm in her ear, and grabbed her ops bag with more knives and guns. She’d work out what she needed when she knew more, but she couldn’t put them on with Jennifer outside. She dropped the bag outside her bedroom door and knocked on Daisy’s door.

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“Pauchok? I’ve got to go to work, but Jennifer is…”  
  


She didn’t get to finish the sentence because the door suddenly flew open and Daisy yelled “NO!”

For an instant Nat gaped at her daughter, shocked by the response. Daisy was never exactly happy when she had to go away, but she’d never reacted like this before. “Excuse me?” she said, warning heavy in her tone.

Daisy ignored it, her face a storm-cloud of emotions Nat couldn’t figure out “No! I don’t want you to go!”

“It’s only for a few hours Pauchok, I’ll be back soon.” She said, unsure what to make of this reaction.

“NOOOOO!! You’re not going!” Daisy screamed, her voice rising in fury and something else Nat couldn’t identify.

“Skye Laura Smythe! You do not shout at me!” Nat said, making her voice stern enough to stop Daisy right in her tracks. Or at least, that was how that tone usually worked. This time Daisy just hesitated for a moment, and then repeated.

“You’re not going.” She said, voice a little less angry but thick in a way that implied impending tears.

“Yes I am, I have to.” Nat said, at a loss with how to handle this and increasingly aware that she needed to get out the door. This wasn’t a random tantrum, this wasn’t Daisy being mad she had to vanish suddenly, Daisy had never responded like that before. But she didn’t know what this was, and there was a crisis across the city she needed to deal with but her daughter but….

“NO!” Daisy shouted again, stomping one foot, and this was rapidly spiralling out of control.

“Skye, if you keep shouting there are going to be consequences.” Nat tried. Daisy looked at her, chest heaving and tears starting to slip down her face. Nat twitched towards her daughter, and then towards the door, and then back to her daughter. The crisis. Her Pauchok. Potential international incident. “I need to go. Be good for Jennifer or there will be serious consequences, do you understand?” It wasn’t fair to Daisy, not when something had to be wrong, but she didn’t know what to _do._

“ _NOOOOOO. You can’t goooo! NOOOOO!”_

Nat swallowed, sending a helpless, desperate look at Jennifer, as though she might know why her daughter was having a meltdown, but the other mother just looked a little awkward. Her comm crackled to life in her ear, telling her that her ride was ready.

Nat panicked, torn between working out what was wrong with her daughter and calming her down and getting out the door to deal with a situation that could cost lives and cause an international incident. “Skye, I have to go.” She said helplessly. “It’s only for a few hours.”

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”

“Go, I’ve got this.” Jennifer said, standing up and coming over.

“ _Thank you!_ I’ll make it up to you.” Nat promised, and grabbed her bag, taking a step towards the door. Daisy gave a howl of denial or anger and physically launched herself at her, grabbing her around the legs.

“NOO-OOO! I don’t want you to go! Please! Don’t go. Please. _I don’t want you to die! Please!”_

**Fuck.**

Nat froze, Jennifer froze, alarm and shock spreading over her face. _Fuck_. She should have seen this coming, should have at least realised this was a possibility. She’d come back from her last op black and blue with bruises, with a fractured shin and broken arm, and the exhausted eyes to go with them. She should have known that would have an impact on Daisy, but she hadn’t seemed like she was seriously affected. Maybe she hadn’t realised herself.

“Agent Romanoff, are you ready?” Her comm asked, and Nat cursed under her breath. Everything was happening far too fast. She detached Skye from her legs and crouched down, holding her daughter firmly by the shoulders, feeling her stomach twist at the tears streaming down her daughter’s face.

“I am not going to die.” Nat said, the words out of her mouth before she could stop them. A promise she couldn’t know, not 100%, that she could keep. But it was too late now. “I am not going to die.” She repeated.

“You-you don’t kn-know that.” Daisy sobbed hysterically “A-a-and C-Cl-Clint isn’t h-here to h-help.”

“I’ve always come back before haven’t I?” Nat said, even though Daisy was right, she was right and it was breaking her heart because Nat couldn’t really promise to survive. “Pauchok I need to go.”

“No-o” Daisy sobbed.

“I have to. I’m sorry. I will come back to you. I promise. _I will come back to you_.”

She stood up, feeling like she was going to break into pieces, and met Jennifer’s lost expression. “Don’t ask Skye, please. I’ll explain when I get back ok. Please.” And then she grabbed her bag and ran out the door, putting the problem of what the hell she was going to tell the civilian out of her mind for the moment.

Mission first, she’d sort out the clusterfuck her life had just become later.

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Despite the tone set by the fiasco before she left, the mission could have gone a lot worse. She’d ended up leaving most of her weapons behind, taking only her Widow’s Bites and the drugs in her necklace and the garrotte in her watch. She also put on a brown wig, fake eyebrows and coloured contact lenses, and injected a chemical into her cheeks to puff them up. It wasn’t the best disguise, but it was the best she could manage quickly. She went in through the vents and let herself be found ‘trying to escape’ as if she’d been hiding since they’d taken control of the hotel. The place was small thankfully, and had been fairly empty, with most of the guests out at the time, and most of the staff having gotten away in the initial panic. Of those left there were the 3 diplomats, 2 other guests, and 4 members of staff. There were 7 hostiles.

It was far from the easiest mission she’d ever done, but it wasn’t close to being the hardest either. Once inside she worked out what was going on (environmental extremists trying to force change), manipulated the hostiles into splitting up, and dealt with them. She subdued all the hostiles and got all the civilians out safely and, aside from having to jump out a window when she clocked a grenade several seconds too late to do something safer about it (the window was not, unfortunately, open, and she had to shoot it and then launch herself at the cracked glass, sustaining dozens of cuts from the breaking glass as well as bruised shoulder and ribs from landing on the balcony a floor below), the mission went remarkably smoothly. Especially for a go-in-there-and-improvise mission.

By the time she’d dealt with the last hostile and gotten the civilians out safely, it was approaching ten in the evening. She did a field debrief with Coulson, promised she’d write a mission report tomorrow, and left before he could realise she was hurt and insist on her getting medical attention. She reclaimed her weapons from where she’d stashed them and got the agent who’d picked her up to take her back again, leaving Coulson and various others behind to prevent an international incident. She got the man to drop her off around the block and spent the walk back to the apartment thinking about what she could tell Jennifer. Unfortunately, by the time she’d reached the apartment block she’d come to the grim realisation that she was going to have to tell Jennifer the truth, or some of it anyway. She could try telling Jennifer that her daughter was worried about her getting hurt at work because of the work accident, but Jennifer knew she hadn’t stopped working while her arm was healing, so it wouldn’t make sense. And it wouldn’t stop her from drawing her own conclusions or looking into things that ought to be left well alone. There wasn’t really any lie she could tell the woman to explain ‘I don’t want you to die’ that was believable and would ensure she didn’t talk to anyone about it.

She was just going to have to tell Jennifer some of the truth. Not all of it, because she had no intention of telling the woman any more than she had to, but more that she was happy with.

And that didn’t even touch what she was going to do about how Daisy had reacted. She had no idea where to even start with that. Not when she couldn’t tell her daughter she was leaving the field. Not when she couldn’t with any fairness, tell her Pauchok she would never die.

She was at the apartment door before she was ready for it, and for a second she hesitated, but neither running away nor delaying would help anything so she shoved her key in the lock, scanned her thumbprint, and opened the door. Jennifer looked up as soon as she opened the door, jumping to her feet, her face a collection of emotions. She opened her mouth but Nat beat her to it.

“How’s Skye?”

Jennifer hesitated, closing and reopening her mouth “Sleeping. I got her to calm down a bit eventually, and eat something, and then she fell asleep, probably of exhaustion.”

Nat nodded, feeling exhausted herself, and wishing she could just go to bed. Instead she closed the door, kicked off her shoes, and went to Daisy’s room, cracking the door open to check on her daughter herself. Daisy was curled up on top of the cover, still fully dressed, with tear tracks on her face. Nat swallowed hard and shoved away the urge to cry herself. Rather than wake Daisy up and let her observant daughter realise she was damp with blood, she retrieved a light fuzzy blanket from the cupboard and covered her with it, before leaving the room and closing the door behind her.

“You’re not a translator, are you?” Jennifer said, voice shaking a little.

“What gave it away?” Nat asked dryly.

“You were on TV, the evening news.” Jennifer said, “Plus Skye’s reaction was something of a hint.”

“I was _what_?” Nat asked alarmed. If her face was on TV then dozens of people who knew Natalie and Skye Smythe could work out who she was. This was bad. This was really bad.

“Not exactly. The woman on the news never looked at the camera, and she had brown hair. But she was wearing the same jacket and the same pants and the same boots and I’m not an idiot.”

Relief mingled with the tiredness running through her “No, you’re not.” She agreed, walking over to the bathroom and retrieving the first aid kit from under the sink. Jennifer followed her to the door, clearly done waiting for answers. “If you don’t like blood close your eyes now.” Nat warned, peeling off her jacket with a wince. Jennifer gave a sharp gasp at the sight of her blood-stained top, but Nat ignored it. She stripped the shirt off and dumped it in the shower to deal with later (she’d wash the blood out before she ditched it, it wasn’t rescue-able but there was no need for it to look like she’d killed someone in it), and then stripped off her pants to do the same with.

Jennifer made a choking sound “Shouldn’t you be in hospital?”

Nat held in her sigh. Civilians… “No, I’ve patched myself up from much worse.”

“ _Worse??_ ” Jennifer asked, voice going a little high.

Nat glanced down at herself, thinking about it from Jennifer’s point of view, and winced. Ok, so she did look a little bad, but that was only because the blood had spread. “It’s looks a lot worse than it is. Look, why don’t you go and sit down, I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

Jennifer gaped at her, “You’re telling _me_ to sit down! You’re the one covered in blood!”

“You’re the one turning pale.” Nat pointed out, retrieving a wash-cloth and dampening it.

Jennifer frowned, and then moved to sit on the toilet, clearly compromising. Nat mentally shrugged and started cleaning the blood off herself. Most of the bleeding had stopped ages ago, but a couple of the deeper cuts were still bleeding sluggishly, and several started bleeding again when she cleaned them. She started with the deeper ones, cleaning them with antiseptic and then putting neat stitches in, and then dealt with the newly-bleeding ones, and then stuck medical tape over a few of the others, and leaving the minor ones. Luckily there was nothing on her hands or face, so Daisy need not know she was hurt. She pressed her fingers lightly over her shoulders and ribs, exploring the damage from her fall to the balcony and concluding it was merely bruises, nothing fractured. Which was a relief because fractured ribs sucked. Jennifer watched in silence as she patched herself up, then cleaned up the blood from the floor, filled a bucket and dumped everything with any blood on it in to soak.

“I’m going to get some clothes.” She said to Jennifer and left. She took a moment to breath, wonder if she should be behaving like this was all normal (whether or not it was, it was clearly shocking to Jennifer), and then stripped off her blood stained underwear (which wasn’t cut and was probably salvageable) and pulled on clean clothes. She emerged from the bedroom to find Jennifer shakily heating up the remains of the chicken casserole. She dumped the underwear in the bucket and came back.

“Thanks” she said when Jennifer handed her a bowl of rice and casserole. She got to take a couple of massive bites of food before Jennifer prompted “So?”

Nat swallowed her mouthful “Yeah, not a translator.”

“So what are you then.”

“I’m, um, there isn’t really a straightforward answer to that.” A spy. An assassin. A strike team agent. “I’m a security forces agent.” She settled on. “A good one. I’m the person they send in when there isn’t enough intel, or when everything is expected to go wrong, or already has.”

Jennifer absorbed this in silence for a few seconds, and Nat continued inhaling food. Eventually Jennifer gave a slightly high-pitched laugh “I thought this kind of thing only happened in movies.”

“Oh trust me, it’s nothing like the movies.” Nat said dryly “There’s a lot more danger, a lot less sex and heroics, and a lot more invisible manoeuvring and paperwork.”

Jennifer snorted at that “There’s always more paperwork than anyone warns you.”

Silence fell for a moment, and then “What happened tonight?”

Nat weighed her answer carefully “There was a crisis across the city, I was the best person to send in so I got called in.”

“Yes, but what actually happened?”

“Environmental terrorists took some people hostage. That’s all I can tell you.”

“What really happened to your arm?”

So question time had properly begun then “I really did fall down the stairs.”

Jennifer raised her eyebrows a little disbelievingly.

“Well, I had a little help with it.” She admitted “But my mission partner got me out.” Eventually, but Jennifer really didn’t need to know she’d been tortured.

“Does that kind of thing, getting hurt like that I mean, happen often?”

“Not really, I do mostly high-risk missions, and I very rarely get hurt that badly.”

“Why don’t we see this kind of thing happening on the news more?”

“Because most of the time we try to deal with things like this before they get as far as actually taking people hostage. Today was a new group, they came out of practically no-where, usually there’s some warning.”

“Oh. So this kind of thing almost happens often?”

“The chances of it happening in any one place are very low.” Nat pointed out, soothing “You don’t have to suddenly become paranoid.”

Jennifer visibly swallowed, leaning back in her chair “So your job is to stop big threats before they hurt people?”

“Yeah.”

“Why do you tell everyone you’re a translator?”

Nat looked towards Daisy’s room without even thinking about it. Jennifer followed her line of sight and realisation dawned on her face. “I’ve made a lot of enemies.” Nat said “Very few of them would hesitate to hurt a child to get revenge.”

Jennifer swallowed hard, “I can never tell anyone about this can I?”

“I’m sorry.” Nat offered, the words hopelessly inadequate. She’d been pulled into a world far out of her comfort zone merely because of knowing Nat and Daisy. There wasn’t really any apology she could give that would make up for that.

“No, no it’s ok. Honestly, I should be thanking you. You keep people like me safe don’t you? I just, it’s a lot to take in.”

“It’s ok.” Nat said. She got up to get some more food, and give Jennifer a few seconds of space, and then settled down in silence to eat.

“Are my kids safe?” Jennifer asked finally “Does knowing you put them in danger?”

Nat hesitated, then “Yes, possibly.” she admitted “If the wrong person works out where I live, where my daughter lives, then knowing us could put you in more danger. But it’s unlikely, and I’d go to hell and back to keep my daughter safe, and that protection extends to Tobi.”

Jennifer nodded “Thank you for being honest.”

Nat held back her grimace. The small amount of truth she’d given Jennifer was hardly being honest. Jennifer had no idea how dangerous she really was, how many enemies she had, how bloody her past was. And even the small amount of honesty she’d given was a risk that left her feeling vulnerable and raw.

“I’m going to tell Roy. I can’t keep something like this from him.” Jennifer said “But neither of us will tell anyone else, and I don’t intend to stop Tobi from being friends with Skye.”

Nat felt a mass of tension she hadn’t been aware she had leak out of her. It would have broken Daisy’s heart to lose Tobi as a friend. “Thank you.”

Jennifer gave her a weak smile, and Nat met it with one of her own. She was aware that this wasn’t over, that there would be more questions, and more uncertainty once the shock had worn off, but she didn’t think Jennifer was going to talk about it to anybody. Daisy was less safe for Jennifer knowing, there was no getting around it, but she wasn’t much less safe, and it could have been much worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Daisy panics when hearing Nat is going to work and screams at her multiple times not to go, and finally begs her not to go because she 'doesn't want her to die'. Nat is torn about whether or not to go but Jennifer says she'll deal with it and Nat makes herself go. 
> 
> Sorry for the angst... There will be more resolution next chapter, and Clint comes back into the story! I've missed writing Clint! What do you guys think about a civilian finding out about Nat?
> 
> Comments make me happy :-)


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat and Daisy talk, Daisy does something new, and the end of term comes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Implied reference to past child abuse and a character getting triggered in the story present. Please don't read if that will upset you, it's not important to the story at all. I've marked where to stop reading and where to start again. 
> 
> I hope you like the chapter!

Daisy woke slowly, feeling disorientated. Her head ached, and her eyes felt funny, and the duvet on top of her wasn’t as heavy as it normally was. She blinked her sticky eyes open to see her bedroom, and found she was on top of the duvet, under the blue fuzzy blanket she’d picked out with Mama. She was still wearing her school clothes, and the sun was shining around the edge of the curtains, brighter than it usually was when she woke up. She sat up, letting the blanket fall off her, and saw Mama sleeping on the floor, even though she hadn’t slept in her room since March. Daisy could fall asleep without someone else in the room now and everything, because she was a big girl and the best agent. Except, except she hadn’t been the best agent had she? 

Her stomach sunk as she suddenly remembered what had happened the night before. She hadn’t meant to get so mad! She’d just heard her Mama say she was going on a mission and she’d suddenly really, really wanted her Mama not to go, and then she’d been shouting and Mama hadn’t listened and her chest had felt all funny and she’d been sure something terrible was going to happen. But nothing terrible had happened, and even if it did, Mama was the bestest agent and she could deal with anything! Except she couldn’t really, because if she could really deal with everything she wouldn’t come back hurt so often. 

But she’d always come back, so why had she thought this time would be different?

Daisy bit her lip looking at her Mama sleeping on the floor, feeling hot and miserable. She hadn’t been a good agent yesterday. She’d had a tantrum and slowed Mama down, and screamed even though good agents were brave for their fellow agents. And she’d probably broken cover too, and Daisy thought Tobi’s mom probably knew something now, because Daisy couldn’t keep her cover. She was a bad agent. Her eyes started to ache, and then sting, and her vision went glassy with tears. She lay back down on the bed, grabbing teddy that was really a cat and hugging her as she started to cry. She wanted to wake Mama, because Mama made everything better, but she didn’t want to disturb her. Mama needed to rest, and she’d messed up lots already. 

But Mama stirred, and then sat up anyway, and the moment her eyes fell on Daisy she opened her arms, and Daisy flung herself at her. Mama’s arms wrapped around her, and rocked her, and nothing bad could happen when Mama had her. She was wearing the fuzzy pyjamas that Clint gave her for Christmas, and they were soft and safe on her cheek even though they were getting really wet. Mama’s arms were warm and firm around her, and her voice was soothing as she talked.

“Ssshhh, sssshhh Pauchok, it’s okay, I’m safe, I’m here, it’s okay, I got you, it’s okay.”

Daisy sniffled into Mamas PJ top, whispering softly “’m sorry”

She could barely hear her own voice and Mama gently pulled her away, so that she could see her face, and stroked damp hair out of her eyes “What was that Pauchok?”

Daisy hicupped through new tears and repeated “’m sorry Mama”

Mama’s eyes widened and she shook her head firmly “No Pauchok, you have nothing to be sorry for, _I’m_ sorry, I’m so sorry Pauchok.”

“B-but I hadda tantrum, an’ I broke cover, an’ now Tobi’s mom prob’ly knows an’ it’s-it’s my fault!”

“No Pauchok, no! Yes, you had a tantrum, and I’m not happy about that, and yes Jennifer knows a little now, but that’s on me, not you. I should have realised much earlier how my job was affecting you, and I’m so sorry Pauchok. But sweetheart, why don’t you say you were worried?”

“I w-wasn’t really, not ‘till you were going, an’ then my chest felt all funny an’ I was really scared. Are you really not mad Mama?”

“I’m not mad, not even a little bit. Thank you for being so good for Jennifer last night, I’m so so so sorry I couldn’t stay to talk to you.”

For a moment Mama looked really sad, as though she was going to cry too, but then it was gone. Daisy knew that was really because Mama was good at showing her emotions, and she felt sorta better that she wasn’t the only one upset, and sorta bad about feeling better. “Did you save people and get the baddies?”

“I did Pauchok, but I think maybe I should have stayed with you.”

“But then who would save the day Mama?”

“I wasn’t ‘saving the day’ Pauchok!” Mama said, laughing a little “I’m not a superhero. And I don’t know, but shield would have sent someone.”

“You’re the bestest agent, an’ saving lives is important.”

“So are you Pauchok.”

Daisy felt strange, all warm and happy inside even though she’d been crying only a minute ago “Being upset isn’ more important than makin’ _sure_ people don’t die.” She pointed out, looking up at Mama seriously.

“It is to me Pauchok. You’re more important than anything to me.”

“But you’re an agent! You’re the bestest agent an’ agents hafta put the mission first, I heard auntie Maria tell another agent so!”

Mama shook her head, still wearing her ‘serious face’ “I’m your Mama before I’m an agent. You’re so important, I don’t want you to ever think you’re not. I can’t stop being an agent, and I can’t promise to always be there when you need me, but I’m going to try harder, okay Pauchok?”

Daisy wasn’t sure how to feel about this, she didn’t like it when Mama was gone, but Mama did really important work and Daisy didn’t want to be the reason she stopped, even though Mama was saying that she wasn’t going to stop. She burrowed back into the hug to avoid answering, and Mama let her, gently stroking her hair in rocking her again. After a while her stomach rumbled loudly, and Daisy pulled away giggling.

Mama laughed with her “Are you hungry then Pauchok?” She teased.

Daisy giggled again “Can we have scrambled eggs for breakfast?” She liked fried eggs better, but Mama could only sometimes cook fried eggs without burning them or worse.

“Sure Pauchok, want to help me mix the eggs?”

“Yesssss, you’re the bestest!”

Mama’s face did that funny expression it sometimes did when Mama wasn’t really sure what to feel, all Mama said was “Bestest isn’t a word”

Daisy knew it wasn’t a word, Mama told her lots and lots of times, and she always replied in the same way “It should be!”

\-------------------------

Things seemed to go back to normal after that. Mama went back to going on regular missions again, and every time she left Daisy felt a surge of worry and fear, but not like the first time. And every time Mama phoned her (on the missions she could) she felt something in her relaxing, and every time she came back safe Daisy felt a little less afraid. She knew Mama had said something to Tobi’s mom, but she didn’t say anything about it and Daisy didn’t either. Tobi didn’t seem to know anything, and Daisy was extra, extra careful not to break cover again, because she was going to be the bestest agent. All agents made mistakes, and she was still training, so breaking cover once was ok. Mama said that it was ok to make mistakes as long as nobody died. Uncle Phil had looked kinda alarmed when she’d said that, and had told her that it was ok to make mistakes as long as she learned from them. 

So for a while things went back to normal. Daisy went to school, used to being called ‘Skye’ now, and played with Tobi and Millie and Dan, and pretended to be normal and kept her cover. She remembered not to climb the drainpipe again (she hadn’t _meant_ to cause trouble, she’d just hadn’t wanted to be tagged), and was careful about the stories from the helicarrier she told. She’d already learned that some of her stories didn’t really sound ’normal’, or real. Daisy thought Mama had forgotten about her tantrum completely, but the morning after she got back from her first proper mission after being hurt (Daisy didn’t think it was a proper mission if Mama had only been gone for a few hours) Mama said she wanted to talk to her. 

Mama said she thought Daisy should talk to a therapist. Her face had looked tight and not quite right about it, and Daisy wasn’t sure that Mama really liked the idea of her talking to a therapist. Daisy wasn’t sure she liked the idea either. She’d heard Mama and uncle Clint complaining about having to go talk to them, and surely it couldn’t be fun. But Mama said she’d been talking to uncle Phil and he thought it was a good idea too. Mama said she should talk to someone about how she felt about her and uncle Clint’s jobs, and about uncle Phil getting hurt, and about not always fitting in at school, and anything else she wanted to talk about. Daisy still didn’t like the idea, but Mama asked if she’d try it at least once, so Daisy agreed. 

Mama took her to the Triskelion a week later, after school, to a place with lots of offices. They bumped into a grumpy looking man on the way in who glared at Mama muttering something. Daisy shrank into Mama.

“Are they all like that?”

“No Pauchok. It’s ok. He was my therapist. I think he’s still mad at me.”

“Why is he mad at you?”

“I sort of pranked him.” Mama said, looking a little bit guilty but mostly amused. 

Daisy giggled “What did you do?”

“It doesn’t matter, Phil and Maria were pretty annoyed about it and I’m not going to do it again.” Mama said, which translated to Mama not wanting to give her ideas. Daisy pouted. 

But despite how nervous she was before she went in, and despite how much Mama and uncle Clint complained about therapy, it wasn’t actually bad. Mama didn’t go in with her, but she said she would be right outside, and if she needed her for any reason to just shout. Daisy didn’t need her though. The therapist was really nice. He offered Daisy juice, and let her sit in his big spinny chair, and they talked about how she worried about her Mama, and how it was natural to feel like that, even if Mama was the bestest agent. He said it was good to let those feelings out in a controlled way, and it wasn’t good to bottle them all up, and they talked about how to do that, and they did some of it. Daisy felt really tired when the hour was up, but lighter, and she wasn’t sure why Mama and uncle Clint hated therapy so much. 

\--------------

The morning of her birthday she was practically bouncing with excitement, and it was really, really hard to hide it. She wasn’t sure she entirely managed it, but she was getting better at undercover so she already had an excuse planned. It was even sort of true. She told Tobi she was going to her aunt Annie and uncle Josh’s house after school, and that was why she was excited, which was true, it just wasn’t the main reason she was excited. She wished she could tell Tobi, and share her birthday with him, but she was undercover so she couldn’t. Skye’s birthday was in Decmber, and she was six and a half, not newly six. Sometimes undercover sucked. 

After school Mama and her went straight to uncle Phil’s. Auntie Maria wasn’t there yet, but uncle Phil said she would be there soon assuming nothing big had happened in the last hour or so. Daisy helped him cook and told him all about the end of year projects they were working on at school, and by the time they were done auntie Maria was knocking on the door. Daisy ran to hug her, and excitedly told her she was six, and asked if he was old enough to join the Academy yet. She heard Mama choking behind her, but ignored it in favour of giving auntie Maria her best puppy dog eyes. 

“Please, auntie Maria? I’ll work really really hard an’ I’ll be the bestest agent that was ever trained and I won’t complain about paperwork!”

Auntie Maria chuckled, and picked her up to hug her properly “Happy birthday Daisy! I’m afraid six is not old enough to join the Academy.”

“Even part time? I’ll still do my normal lessons? Pretty please with a cherry on top?” she tried.

“No” auntie Maria said, although she looked amused. 

Daisy thought for a moment “Pretty please with a grenade on top?”

Mama started choking again and auntie Maria snorted with laughter “Creative, but still no. Shield only takes adults.”

Daisy pouted “Mama wasn’t an adult when she started.” She sulked. 

There was a brief awkward pause that let Daisy know that she shouldn’t have said that, and then Maria said firmly “She was when she started with us.” 

Maria’s tone indicated that the conversation was over, but it wasn’t _fair_! Mama had started when she was six. It wasn’t _fair!_ “Well I want to go train with the people who taught Mama!” she said, stomping her foot. 

The shocked and then mad look on auntie Maria’s face made her freeze. That was Maria’s ‘you’re in trouble’ face. 

“That’s _enough_ Daisy.” Uncle Phil said, and his voice was quiet and serious, and when Daisy turned around, he was looking at her in disappointment. All the mad feelings suddenly drained out of her, and she looked away. She turned to Mama to find her face so blank Daisy couldn’t tell anything at all from it, and she felt her heart sink to her stomach. Mama only did that when she was _really_ upset. 

“Nat?” Maria asked tentatively. 

Mama flinched a tiny bit, and Daisy felt even worse.

“I’m going to get some air.” Mama said, voice blank. 

Daisy felt tears well up in her eyes “I’m sorry Mama.” She said, voice coming out small and guilty.

Mama stopped and crouched down to her level “It’s ok. I love you Pauchok.” She said deliberately, the blankness cracking a little as she smiled, even if it didn’t quite reach her eyes. 

“I love you too Mama.” Daisy said. 

Mama kissed her on the forehead, and then got up and slipped out the door, and Daisy watched her go with a funny feeling in her tummy. “Is Mama ok?”

Auntie Maria and uncle Phil exchanged looks Daisy couldn’t understand. “She’ll be ok.” Phil said finally. “She just needs a moment. It’s not your fault.”

“But I asked about the Academy.”

Uncle Phil smiled sadly “That’s not really what she’s upset about.”

He was using that tone of voice adults use when they’re not going to tell you anymore, so Daisy didn’t bother trying. She let uncle Phil distract her into helping lay the table and set up a couple of party games. Mama came back after ten minutes and spoke to uncle Phil quietly for a couple of minutes, and then came over to hug her, looking normal again. She didn’t mention what Daisy had said, and Daisy didn’t bring it up again. 

The rest of the afternoon was _so much fun_! Uncle Phil set the music player up to pause randomly and they played musical statues and pass the parcel and pin the tail on the donkey. Auntie Maria declared party games over after Mama pinned ‘the tail’ on her. 

Mama made a face so innocent even Daisy could tell she’d done it on purpose “But it was an accident.”

Auntie Maria just snorted “If that was an accident then I’m the tooth fairy.” 

Uncle Phil had made lots of Daisy’s favourite foods for supper, even though lots of them weren’t healthy, and there were crisps and juice and no vegetable she didn’t like. And for dessert there was birthday cake _and_ ice cream and she got to blow out the candles and Mama even let her have seconds! And after that Daisy got to open her presents and it was a really good birthday even if she couldn’t spend it with Tobi, Dan and Millie. 

\-------------------

The end of term arrived suddenly, even though they’d been doing end of term projects for weeks. Somehow it was just the end of term one day, and that was it. She said goodbye to Tobi, Dan and Millie after school and then it was the summer holiday. 

Daisy was surprised at the thought of how much she was going to miss her friends. She hadn’t expected to get so attached to going to school and playing with kids her age. But it was fun playing with them, even if it wasn’t as cool as agent training and even if she did have to be careful not to say too much. Luckily, she wasn’t given too long to get bored or miss her friends because they were flying out to the farm only two days after school finished. Daisy couldn’t wait to see uncle Clint and aunt Laura again, and to meet cousin Cooper. It had been foreeeeever since Cooper was born, he was over two months now, and that was eternity in the life of a baby! Daisy wondered if her cousin would want to be an agent too. She could teach him to pick locks and how to sneak without getting caught and to be the second best agent ever! 

Mama let her help pack to go to the farm, giving her a list of things they would need and helping her fit everything into her suitcase. It was just like packing for an op, except without any weapons. Daisy didn’t point that out to Mama though, she knew her Mama still didn’t like the agent game much. She still made funny faces whenever Daisy said she wanted to grow up to be just like her. 

They flew commercially, because Mama didn’t need to bring any weapons with her (although Daisy noticed that Mama didn’t say she wasn’t bringing any) and it was easier this time to fly commercial. Daisy wasn’t sure she liked flying commercial. They had to go through an airport, and it involved loads of waiting around, and it was really boring. And the plane didn’t take off as smoothly as quinjets’ did, and she was sick into a paper bag and the flight took longer. They weren’t even there yet when they landed! They had to catch a bus to the town near the farm and it was two whole hours long and it was sooooo boring. Mama was clearly desperate half the journey because she played a sort of I-spy game with Daisy where Daisy had to spot signs and clues of where other passengers were going and where they were coming from and what work they did. It was really fun and really cool but they’d been playing it since the airport in DC and even a sort of agent game was boring now. 

_Finally_ they reached the town, and Daisy saw uncle Clint waiting for them out the window. She waved wildly at him as the bus came to a stop and Mama grabbed their bags and they finally got off that stupid boring bus. She went running straight for uncle Clint, who had his arms open waiting for a hug. Clint rocked backwards as she barrelled into him, and then stood up, swinging her around in his arms. 

“Here’s my favourite little Daisychain!”

“I’m your only Daisychain.” Daisy pointed out, giggling. “I missed you.” She informed him.

“I missed you more.” Uncle Clint replied.

“Nuh-uh” Daisy denied

“Uh-huh” Clint returned. 

“Did not” 

“Did too!” 

“Did not!”

“Did too!”

“Did too!”

“Did not! _Wait! Hang on!_ ”

Daisy burst into giggles, echoed by her Mama’s snorts of laughter. Uncle Clint pouted. 

“This is the hello I get from the partner and niece I haven’t seen in 4 months, trickery and mocking!” He pretended to be completely offended and Daisy giggled again.

“Just wait until I tell Phil you got had by a six-year-old.” Mama pointed out, voice shaking with laughter. 

Clint’s face fell, clearly imagining the ribbing he was going to get, but he smiled at Daisy “Well then you’re clearly the cleverest six-year-old in the whole world!”

Daisy giggled again, before wriggling down from Clint’s arms and examining him critically “You’ve gotten shorter.” She observed. 

Mama burst out laughing again at the pout on uncle Clint’s face. “I think you’ve gotten taller, not Clint shorter, Pauchok! Although, hmmm, Clint you do look smaller, you’ve lost muscle. Clearly paternity leave has let you get soft.”

Uncle Clint spluttered, pointing a finger at Mama in denial, muttering something about “I’ll show you soft!” before dragging Mama into a hug that Mama didn’t really protest about. 

Mama shoved him away after a few moments, pretending not to have been enjoying the hug “Come on birdbrain, I want to meet my godson!” 

\----------------

Cooper was…not how Daisy had imagined. He was small and pink, and wrinkly, and kinda helpless, and not nearly as cute as Nutella was. He had tiny little fingers and a gummy smile though, and Daisy felt this instinctive urge to protect him. 

“He’s so _small_ ” Daisy said.

“You were that small once.” Mama said, looking up from Cooper. 

Aunt Laura had met them outside when they’d arrived, and pulled Mama in for a hug around the baby in her arms, and then handed that baby to Mama to hug Daisy. They’d moved indoors, and taken off their shoes but Mama was still holding Cooper, bouncing him in her arms and pretending she wasn’t cooing at him.

“I wasn’t. I was never that small.” Daisy denied.

“You were. You were even smaller than Cooper is.”

Daisy stared at her and Cooper in disbelief, unable to imagine ever being that small. “But I’m way bigger in even the oldest photos.” She denied again.

Mama smiled, although the look was tinged with sadness “Those photos are all from when you were over a year old. I only have one photo of you before that, from when you were three months old.”

Uncle Clint raised his eyebrows in surprise “I didn’t know you had a photo of Daisy before you joined us.”

Mama stiffened. Not enough for anyone who didn’t know her really well to notice, but Daisy noticed, and she could tell uncle Clint had noticed too. 

“Daisy, you want to hold your cousin?” Mama asked, and Daisy forgot about it.

“ _Can I???_ ”

“May.” Mama corrected “But yes you may. Sit down and hold your arms like I’m holding mine. OK, you’ve got to support his head and neck especially, got it?”

“Uh-huh” Daisy said, nodding, and Mama carefully transferred Cooper into her arms. 

He was lighter than Daisy expected, and even wrinklier up close, but he was also cuter up close, with a tiny little nose and scrunched up eyes. Daisy looked down at him in awe, amazed at the tiny human she was holding. 

She looked up at aunt Laura “He’s cute. Can you show me how to make a baby too?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Daisy...
> 
> Comments make me happy :-)


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy tries to cook and a camping trip is begun

Four days later Daisy peered around the door to her cousin, glaring. He was just a lump of wrinkly skin. He wasn’t even that cute, not really. Nutella was cuter. And Nutella didn’t cry all the time or make really bad smells. Daisy didn’t see what all the fuss was about. 

It wasn’t _fair_. All auntie Laura and uncle Clint and Mama seemed to do was hold Cooper and look after Cooper and play with Cooper. And Cooper couldn’t even play anything fun! All he did was bat at toys when they were put near him. Even Mama seemed to do nothing but play with Cooper. It wasn’t _fair_. Mama was _her_ mother. Not Cooper’s. And auntie Laura and uncle Clint were _her_ uncle and aunt, and she hadn’t seen them for ages and ages and ages and they could hold Cooper anytime they liked but they couldn’t play with Daisy and it wasn’t _fair_. Daisy didn’t think she liked having a cousin much. Tobi always complained about his little sister but Daisy had never understood what he had to complain about before. She still didn’t completely see. At least Tobi’s little sister could do things. All Cooper did was cry and eat and sleep. And make bad smells. Really bad smells. 

“Are you going to glare at us all day Pauchok? Or are you going to come in?” Mama asked, without turning round. Daisy didn’t ask how Mama knew that she was there, or how she knew that Daisy was glaring. Mama just new things like that because Mama was the bestest spy. She abandoned the doorway and went into the living room properly, collapsing dramatically into the couch like she’d seen uncle Clint do. It didn’t have the same effect when she did it, Daisy didn’t think she was tall or heavy enough for it. It did not improve her mood. For a moment she thought Mama was going to say something but then she seemed to decide against it and just reached out a hand to ruffle Daisy’s hair. Daisy shoved the hand away because she was 6 now and 6 was lots too old to have her hair ruffled. Mama sighed a little and asked if she wanted to hold Cooper but Daisy shook her head. Two days ago all she wanted to do was hold Cooper, all the time, and Mama wouldn’t let her because she wanted to hold Cooper too. But now Daisy didn’t want to hold Cooper and _now_ Mama was offering. She kicked a foot moodily against the couch. 

“Can I go and read?”

“May I” Mama corrected.

Daisy glared “Can I?” She repeated

Mama raised an eyebrow at her, and Daisy knew she was getting close to being in trouble. She didn’t really care.

Mama nodded eventually, and Daisy went off to find something to read. Auntie Laura and uncle Clint kept some kids books on a shelf, and she still hadn’t read all of them. She found that babies books had been added to the shelf and scowled. Cooper wasn’t even old enough to read! He wouldn’t be old enough for years and years! It was _Daisy’s_ shelf for _Daisy’s_ books. It wasn’t fair. Cooper was everywhere. She took a book at random and sat in the armchair rather than next to Mama again and started to read even though she’d read the story before and didn’t like it. She glanced up once to find Mama looking at her looking kind of sad and lost, and she felt bad. But Mama had chosen _Cooper_ , even though he was small and wrinkly and boring, so Daisy made herself look back down at the book again and keep reading, even though her eyes felt hot and she kind of wanted to cry. Agents didn’t cry, so Daisy wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t. She refused. 

\--------------

Mama helped her in the bath that evening, even though auntie Laura usually helped when Daisy was at the farm. But auntie Laura was asleep, and Mama said she shouldn’t be disturbed because she was really tired. Daisy knew that, because auntie Laura had the black marks under her eyes that Mama and uncle Clint got after long missions or bad nights and she yawned lots and lots. She didn’t want auntie Laura to be tired, but it wasn’t fair. Auntie Laura was only tired because of Cooper, and Daisy wanted her turn with her auntie. Auntie Laura was the best at bath games. It wasn’t fair. Cooper got auntie Laura all the time, and Daisy only got to see her a little and she didn’t even get to see her. She’d been good. She was taking turns. But Cooper wasn’t! 

She was quiet all through bath time, even though Mama tried to get her to talk, and she didn’t complain when Mama said it was bedtime afterwards. She curled up under the covers facing away from Mama (Daisy could sleep without Mama there now, but sometimes Mama liked to stay anyway, and Daisy didn’t mind, even though she was mad at Mama.) and wishing she didn’t have a cousin and feeling bad about it because it wasn’t really Cooper’s fault auntie Laura and uncle Clint and Mama didn’t have time for her anymore. 

\------------

Daisy woke up before Mama did in the morning. Uncle Clint had taught her how to tell the time by looking at the sun but Daisy wasn’t very good at it so she didn’t really know what time it was. She thought it was early though. She got out of bed carefully, trying not to make any noise so she didn’t wake Mama. She knew from experience that even the tiniest whisper of noise could wake Mama up. Even uncle Clint didn’t sleep as lightly as Mama did. She snuck out of the room and downstairs, careful to avoid the creaky bits of the floor and stairs. 

Only once she was downstairs did she realise that she didn’t really know what she wanted to do. She didn’t want to read, and she didn’t really want to play. Playing with toys wasn’t really that much fun on your own. Lego was ok on your own, but Daisy had played with lego lots recently. She practised punching and kicking in the living room for a bit, and pretended she was already an agent and was beating up bad guys to save the world. But there was no one to play with, and she didn’t know if she was doing it right, and she got bored. She wandered through to the kitchen thinking she could maybe get breakfast even though she wasn’t hungry, but when she got to the kitchen she saw the oven and she had an idea.

Maybe if uncle Clint and auntie Laura had cookies, they wouldn’t be so tired. Cookies made everything better, even the worst scraped knees, so it had to make tired better. And Daisy knew where auntie Laura kept the recipes. She could make cookies for everyone as a surprise! 

Suddenly animated and excited, she grabbed a chair from the table and dragged it over to the counters, careful not to make too much noise. She stood on the chair and got the recipe from the cupboard and read it quickly. She was about to get ingredients out when she remembered that auntie Laura always said to start by washing her hands. She dragged the chair over to the sink and washed her hands, washing them enthusiastically. Mama and auntie Laura and uncle Clint were gonna be so happy! She dried her hands and started getting ingredients out. When she made cookies with auntie Laura, they always got everything out first and then started, so Daisy made sure she did that too. She got all the ingredients and the scales and a bowl and a wooden spoon and a tray out and put them on the counter. She even remembered to switch the oven on so it would be ready when the cookie mix was ready. Even auntie Laura sometimes forgot that bit, and auntie Laura was the best cook in the world. Even better than uncle Phil! 

The recipe didn’t say what to do first, so Daisy figured it didn’t matter. She put the bowl on the scales and poured the milk in first. She didn’t get it quite right, but she thought it would be ok if she put a little extra of everything else out. She shoved the milk to the side when she was done, forgetting to put the lid back on, and grabbed the eggs next. She dropped a few bits of shell in, and her hands got a bit messy fishing them out, but she wiped them on her pjs so she didn’t need to move the chair again to wash her hands, so it was ok. She put the eggshells with the milk and grabbed the sugar next. She put too much in again, lots too much, but that was ok because you couldn’t have too much sugar in cookies! She put extra cocoa powder in to make sure it was still just as chocolaty though. The powder made the milk splash when she poured it in, and made a big cloud of cocoa, and Daisy giggled. She added the baking powder next, putting twice the amount in because she’d put a bit too much of lots of things in. Then all that was left was the chocolate chips and the flour. She ate a few of the chocolate chips (more than a few, but she was a big girl so she could have more chocolate chips) but she put most of them in the bowl. It was more chocolate chips than the recipe said, but you couldn’t have too much chocolate. Then she grabbed the flour, bouncing with excitement to almost be ready to stir. 

She was bouncing a little too hard, and she dropped the bag, and it made a thump and she help her breath hoping nobody had heard. Luckily there was no noise from upstairs, so she climbed off the chair and picked the bag up. Some of the flour had come out, and there was lots on the floor and some on the chair and the cupboard, but she could clean it up later, while the cookies were in the oven. She made sure to hold it more carefully and tipped the flour into the bowl, and even got the amount almost right. Then she put the flour with the other used ingredients and picked up the spoon, mixing enthusiastically. It was harder to stir without someone holding the bowl and it fell over a couple of times, and some of it fell out, but not too much and Daisy didn’t think it mattered too much. She mixed it until it all looked the same and her arm was kinda sore, and then she spooned it onto the tray. Not all the cookies were the same size, and she ate some of the cookie dough, but they were normally like that, and Mama didn’t need to know she’d eaten some of the dough. She knocked the milk off the counter climbing off the chair with the tray, and she sort of caught it (and managed not to drop the tray) but most of the milk fell out. She could clean it up with the flour though. She stepped around the spill carefully, making sure not to slip over, and put the tray on the counter to open the oven. Her fingers closed around the oven door ready to pull, but her hand flew away from it without her meaning to and then there was pain. 

She screamed, a shocked wail of agony tearing out of her as she stumbled backwards, slipping in the milk and landing on her bottom hard but not able to feel it over the pain in her hand. There was the sound of doors slamming open upstairs, but Daisy barely registered it over the pain. 

“ _Mamaaaaaaaaa_ ” she wailed. 

There were running footsteps down the stairs and Mama and uncle Clint burst into the room together, both holding guns. Daisy had never seen them quite like this before, and for a moment they were big and scary. Mama and Clint loomed above her, and for a moment they were so fierce and Daisy was so scared. But then Mama was sweeping her up in her arms and it was gone and Daisy forgot all about it, too busy with the pain in her hand. Mama carried her out of the kitchen and into the living room, cuddling her close and whispering comfort to her. Uncle Clint disappeared and reappeared with a bandage and some cream that made her hand hurt less. He wrapped it in bandages and pretended to kiss it better, even though that didn’t really work, and Daisy giggled a little. 

“Feel better Pauchok?” Mama asked, and Daisy nodded even though her hand still ached because it was _better_ and she was an agent in training and agents didn’t complain about little burns. Even though that had felt like a really big burn and it had really, really hurt. 

“Good, you scared me sweetheart.”

“Sorry Mama” Daisy sad, feeling bad for scaring her Mama. She remembered the tight feeling in her chest when Mama got hurt and wished she hadn’t made her Mama feel like that.

“It’s ok Pauchok, I want you to scream when you’re hurt, or when you need help. You did good sweetheart.”

Daisy brightened a little.

“But Daisy, you know you’re not supposed to cook on your own.” Mama said, her voice and face turning stern, and Daisy shrank in on herself, feeling tears rise up again. 

“I-I forgot.” She sniffled. “I w-wanted to s-surprise you an’ auntie Laura an’ uncle Clint an’ make it so ev’ryone wasn so-o tired an’ you’d play with me again but now I’ve made a mess an’ scared you an’ auntie Laura’s gonna be mad and ev’ryone will just play with Cooper again an’ it’s no-ot f-faaaair.” Daisy said, and then burst into sobs again. She hadn’t meant to say all of that, but it really wasn’t fair, and she missed Mama and untie Laura and uncle Clint and she’d felt so sad when they’d played with Cooper instead. Mama pulled her into a tighter hug, rocking her and whispering something Daisy couldn’t hear over her sobs. But Mama rubbed her back and kept rocking her and eventually her tears slowed and she just lay limply in Mama’s arms, enjoying the cuddle even though she still didn’t feel good. 

“I’m so sorry Pauchok.” Mama said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Why you sorry Mama?” Daisy asked without raising her head. She was the one who’d woken them up and made a mess of the kitchen and burned herself.

“I’m sorry you felt like that. I’m sorry I made you feel like that. I should have realised that was why you were upset.”

Daisy sniffled “I don’t think I like Cooper anymore.” she admitted “I took turns an’ let him have you an’ uncle Clint an’ auntie Laura but _he_ didn’t take turns an’ it’s not fair.”

“Oh Pauchok.” Mama said, and she didn’t say anything for a while until she finally said “I wish I could tell you I could make it all better but I can’t Pauchok. Cooper’s a baby, and he needs lots of looking after, but we’ll try harder ok? I’m sorry we got caught up in looking after Cooper. I’m so sorry I didn’t realise you were feeling left out. How about this Pauchok, we’ll all try to spend some time every day with just you ok? I can’t promise everyone can manage it every day, but we’ll try ok?”

Daisy thought it over. It wouldn’t be quite the same as before, but it did sound nice. And she supposed Cooper wasn’t all _that_ bad when he wasn’t stealing all the attention. And he was kinda cute and that made up for a bit. “That sounds good. I’m sorry I’m a baby Mama.”

“You’re not a baby Daisy, don’t feel bad for being upset.”

“But I’m a big girl now, and I’m not supposed to get upset or want attention.”

Mama hesitated, then leaned close to whisper “Want to know a secret?” Daisy nodded eagerly. “I get upset too, and sometimes I want attention too. Do you think I’m a baby?”

Daisy shook her head vigorously, eyes wide. Mama was the bestest most badass (a word she’d get into trouble for if she said aloud) agent ever! If she felt like that it couldn’t possibly be babyish. She smiled at Mama properly for the first time that morning, and Mama’s answering smile made Daisy feel lighter inside. “Can I help clean the kitchen?” she asked. 

“Hmm, maybe a little, but you have to be careful of your hand. That will take a couple of days to heal.”

Daisy looked down at her hand. The cream uncle Clint had put on it was really good, and it barely hurt anymore, but Daisy still knew she’d hurt it pretty bad. “The oven’s mean.” She observed.

“Yes, it is.” Mama agreed “Please don’t forget you’re not allowed to cook without help again.”

“Am I in trouble?”

Mama shook her head “No, I think your hand is quite enough for you to learn your lesson isn’t it Pauchok?”

Daisy nodded firmly. She wasn’t going to do _that_ again. She slipped her good hand into Mama’s and headed into the kitchen with her, feeling better than she had for days. Maybe things weren’t quite how they’d used to be, but they weren’t that bad. And there were still cookies waiting to be baked! 

\----------

A week later Daisy was almost vibrating with excitement as she waited for Mama and uncle Clint. Uncle Clint was fussing over auntie Laura and Cooper, even though auntie Laura was almost shoving uncle Clint out the door. This was uncle Clint’s first time properly away from Cooper since he was born, and Mama said he was worried. This was supposed to be a test run because uncle Clint’s paternity leave ran out pretty soon, and he’d have to start going away on missions again. This let them try it out without Clint having to go so far, or the stakes being so high. 

They were going camping. Daisy had read about it in a book and begged Mama to take her. Mama had said sleeping outside wasn’t any fun, but uncle Clint said Mama had just never done it the fun way, and they’d started bickering, and somewhere along the way auntie Laura decided that Mama and uncle Clint and her were going to go camping and she was going to stay with Cooper. 

Finally, Mama got tired of uncle Clint being silly and grabbed him by the arm, cheerfully offering to empty her water bottle over his head if he didn’t get a move on. Auntie Laura shot a grateful look at Mama and Daisy had to stifle a giggle at the pout on Clint’s face. He did finally swing his bag onto his back and join them though, so that was good. Adults could take sooooo long sometimes. Especially non-shield adults. Daisy had learned rapidly that civilian adults took even loooonger to get things done than agents. Daisy wasn’t going to be that slow when she grew up, she was just gonna get things done. She was gonna be the bestest agent!

She hitched her own bag higher up on her back and pretended she was an agent already. She was Agent Daisy Romanoff, codename - ummmm she’d come back to that -, the best and brightest of Shield. Her mission: deliver top secret information to base. But first she had to make it through miles and miles of enemy territory. There were enemy agents everywhere, she couldn’t risk public transport, she couldn’t risk being seen, she couldn’t trust anyone. She had to keep moving, it was all up to her. She gripped the straps of her backpack and marched after uncle Clint, uhhh, after the guide: an enemy civilian who wanted to defect and who she had no choice but to trust and his friend, a spy for an allied country Agent Daisy isn’t sure is a real ally. She must remain wary, she must not let down her guard, she must not fail her mission, she must not…

“Pauchok, slow down! You’ll wear yourself out going that fast. We’ve got miles to go, there’s not hurry.”

Daisy jumped, realising she’d overtaken uncle Clint and the farmhouse was already out of sight. The spy who was possibly an ally suddenly became Mama again and Daisy remembered that Mama had done lots of journey’s like this and if she said Daisy would get tired, she definitely would. She slowed down.

“Mama?”

“Yes Pauchok?”

“Tell me a story?”

“What kind of story?”

“A mission story! Pleaaaaase?”

Mama frowned “Missions aren’t really story material.”

“Some of them are,” Daisy pointed out “you’ve told me lots before. Pleeeeeeaseee.”

“I could tell you about the time Nat got arrested with the guy she was supposed to be arresting.” Uncle Clint offered.

Mama’s eyes widened slightly “Clint Barton don’t you _dare_.”

“Tell me tell me!!” Daisy begged.

“Clint _no_.” 

“Clint _yes._ ” uncle Clint grinned, his expression teasing for an instant before it burst into alarm as Mama bolted towards him. He gave a yelp of alarm and burst into a run too, trying to keep out of Mama’s reach. Daisy sighed. _Adults_. Who was going too fast and going to get tired now? And they were both silly, Mama was going to catch uncle Clint eventually, and uncle Clint was definitely gonna tell her the story eventually anyway, so both of them were only wasting energy. Agent Daisy was way more sensible than they were. She marched on after the retreating backs of her guide and possible ally, who’d both abandoned her as soon as possible danger had come. But Agent Daisy wasn’t beaten yet. She was dressed in a stolen disguise - looking just like the enemy agents themselves. If she didn’t draw attention to herself there was no reason for her to be stopped. She just had to be brave, and agent Daisy was the bravest agent Shield had ever seen. She marched on and on until she rediscovered her disloyal companions wrestling on the grass, trying to tickle each other.

Daisy snapped back into the real world. There was no pretending there were enemy agents around waiting to pounce when someone was having a tickle fight in front of you on a sunny day. She took off her backpack and sat next to it on the grass, waiting for Mama and uncle Clint to finish. Mama won eventually, pinning Clint down and tickling his ribs until he begged for mercy, which Mama graciously granted…eventually. 

“So, how far did we get?” Mama asked in that voice she used when she wasn’t even pretending not to be amused.

Uncle Clint glanced around “About half a kilometre? Let’s not tell Laura about this.”

Daisy smiled sneakily “A story for a secret?”

Mama groaned, pointing a finger at Daisy “That’s blackmail!” she said, but Daisy could tell she wasn’t really mad, only teasing. 

“Nuh-uh” Daisy said, “It’s bribery.”

Uncle Clint burst into howls of laughter, and after a moment Mama joined him. Daisy blinked, “What’s so funny?”

“I have given you the weirdest idea of normal.” Mama chuckled, calming down a little.

Daisy shrugged “Normal is boring.” Agent’s didn’t need normal, except for undercover, and Daisy was learning that at school. 

Uncle Clint who’d just managed to stop laughing, started again, until Mama poked him in the stomach “Come on birdbrain, if we don’t get moving we’ll never get there.” 

“Oooff” Clint complained theatrically, pretending to be hugely hurt.

“Stop it” Mama said, “or I’ll hit you properly.”

Daisy wasn’t entirely sure if Mama was joking or not, and evidently uncle Clint wasn’t either, because he got up and grabbed his bag. “Come on Daisychain, I’ll tell you the story as we walk.”

Mama groaned “I don’t know why you want to tell this story, it’s not like it wasn’t embarrassing for you too.”

“I won’t laugh.” Daisy offered.

“Yes you will.” Mama said, tone resigned “Just don’t tell uncle Phil, aunt Maria or grandpa Fury ok? We left part of the story out of our mission report because Phil would never have let us hear the end of it.”

“I won’t tell. Pinkie promise.” Daisy said solemnly. She’d learned pinkie promises off Tobi, Dan and Millie, and she knew they were unbreakable. 

“Ok, so.” Uncle Clint began. “Once upon a time in a land far, far away.” Mama snorted, but uncle Clint continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “There was a handsome archer and a brave spy, and they were hunting for a villainous foe! A great enemy who broke into mighty castles and stole mounds of treasure!”

“It was a bank Clint, it was hardly a mighty fortress. And they were stealing information as much as the money.”

“Ssshhh” Clint said impatiently. “The handsome archer and brave spy had finally worked out a pattern to this dastardly foe’s attacks and moved in to capture them and bring them to justice! The brave spy had come up with a brilliant plan to catch them red-handed, right in the middle of their thievery. Remember, it was the brave spy’s idea.”

“Yeah, yeah, rub it in birdbrain. You know I’ll get my revenge right?”

Clint gulped but forged on “This plan was simple, the brave spy and handsome archer would break into the mighty castle first and lie in wait for their dastardly foe, and would then trigger the castle’s traps to thwart the plans of their dastardly foe.”

“What does thwart mean?”

“Stop, prevent from happening.”  


“Ok, what happened next?”

“The plan started off perfectly. The brave spy and handsome archer slipped past many watchmen and even more traps to gain entrance to the treasure room of the castle, making it look so easy it was as though they’d done it many times before.”

“We _had_ done it lots of times before.”  


“Stop interrupting, it’s rude! Set a good example for your daughter!” uncle Clint teased. Mama stuck her tongue out in response, and Daisy had to stifle her giggles. 

“What happened then?” 

“The brave spy and handsome archer did not have long to wait, because soon their dastardly foe arrived, bent on stealing mounds of treasure that wasn’t theirs.”  


“That is what stealing means.”

“ _Na-at_ , stop interrupting! _Anyway_ , the brave spy and handsome archer jumped right into action, setting off the traps of the mighty castle and shutting all the doors tight, even as the warning bell rang out loudly. The dastardly foe saw that they were caught, but they refused to admit defeat and pulled out a gun. But the brave spy and handsome archer were not defeated! They fought bravely and skilfully, and they defeated their three dastardly foes, knocking them out just in time for the, um, knights of the castle to run in and take them away. But here the plan went wrong. For the brave spy had overlooked telling the knights of the castle what they were doing, and ….”

“I did _not_ overlook it, _you_ said you’d talk to Coulson and then you got distracted by the hotdog stand and _forgot_!”

Uncle Clint waved his hand airily “Daisy doesn’t need the boring details. Anyway, the knights of the castle were unaware that the brave spy and handsome archer had come to help, and because they found them in the treasure room with their dastardly foe, they, ah, mistook us for thieves and arrested us too.”  


Daisy burst into giggles, and uncle Clint pretended to pout at her before continuing. “The brave spy and handsome archer did of course protest their innocence and offer explanation, but they had brought no identification, and the knights would not listen to reason. They could of course have defeated the knights of the castle in a fight, but that would have meant fleeing and abandoning their defeated dastardly foes and losing the chance to question them on their methods of dastardly um, deeds.”

Mama snorted again, and Clint ignored her again. “So they allowed themselves to be arrested and sent to the dark and dreary prison with their dastardly foes, where they were separated and shoved into small, cold, boring cells and abandoned to the merciless hand of boredom.” Another snort from Mama. “The handsome archer languished in agonising boredom, wasting away until, a miracle, rescue came! It was the brave spy! She had escaped! She had used her many talents to uh, steal some hairpins from a guard and pick the lock, and came to rescue her poor dying companion.”

This time Mama’s snort was distinctly louder “You were only there for three hours. You were hardly dying.”

“Sssshhh, you’re spoiling the story. Once they were reunited after their _long_ , cruel separation, the pair put their skills together and came up with an ingenious plan. They took to the ceiling vents and travelled across the gloomy prison until they reached the, umm, observation tower. They knocked out the watchful guards and, well, hacked the computers and shut everything down. Then came stage two of the brilliant pair’s ingenious plan, while prison guards scrambled around trying to work out why no electric doors would open and no communications could be sent, they found their dastardly foes, loaded them into a, uh, carriage and fled as fast as the horses could run. While the handsome archer directed the horses with great skill…”

“Almost crashed the car several times”

“ _While the handsome archer directed the horses with great skill_ the brave spy told their dastardly foes that they had broken them out of prison but they expected repayment. Half of their loot was their price for taking them somewhere safe. Much haggling was had..”

“Huh?”

“I let the criminals argue down the price Pauchok”

“The brave spy allowed the dastardly foes to argue down the price, and a bargain was struck. The address of a safe place was provided by the dastardly foes and the handsome archer directed the horses towards it. While on the road, the brave spy continued to make friends with the dastardly foes, learning all sorts of their secrets until finally, they had all the secrets they needed from the dastardly foes, and they once again knocked them out and, well, called for extraction. Their kind leader, a great king to whom they gave their loyalty, came to meet them in a great flying carriage and the brave spy and handsome archer tied their dastardly foes in the back of it. Then the brave spy began telling the great tale of the capture, but imagine the handsome archer’s shock when the brave spy boldly lied to their kind king!”

“Hey, it was only a little lie! And I told you beforehand!”

“The brave spy told their kind king, who trusted them to always tell the purest truth…”

“He did not, Coulson wasn’t an idiot and he’d known me for six months!”

“Stop interrupting!” uncle Clint whined. 

Mama rolled her eyes but waved for Clint to go on “The brave spy told their kind king that they had intentionally been captured with their dastardly foes, in order to have the opportunity to rescue and befriend them and learn all their secrets. And the kind king swallowed the lies of his trusted friend, and the handsome archer could not bear to tell him the truth, so he followed the brave spy’s story, and to this day, as far as the kind king knows, being arrested was always the plan.”

“And it’s going to stay that way, right Daisy?”

“I know, I pinkie promised.” Daisy reminded Mama, giggling. She liked this new way of telling stories. 

“Good, Phil would never let us hear the end of it.”

“Can I have another story?”

“No, I think that’s quite enough stories.”

“But that was only one!” Daisy complained, trying her puppy dog eyes without success. Puppy dog eyes rarely worked on Mama, but it was worth a try.

“Nope. Anyway, we’re over halfway there already, and I thought you wanted to learn how to read a map?”

Oh yeah! Agent Daisy would definitely need to know how to read a map to get across enemy territory without getting caught! “Yeah, I wanna learn! Please!”

Mama smiled, and slowed to a stop so she could hold the map still for Daisy, and started explaining. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is somehow both one of the angstier and fluffiest chapters I've ever written!
> 
> Comment make me happy :-)


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Camping continues and Clint and Nat are always in step until they're not

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is kind of all over the place, sorry. I'm still not sure whether I like how it turned out. 
> 
> Trigger warning for past child abuse and meltdowns from trauma. I've marked it and it's not important to the story (it's a subplot, and a small one at that), and it's pretty strong so PLEASE DON'T READ if it will trigger you. Seriously, it's a pretty matter of fact and vivid look at repressed trauma, and I don't want to trigger anyone. 
> 
> The beginning is mostly fluff though, and the end is angst and fluff, it's just the middle that's rough. Hope you guys like it.

Once they reached the forest they were gonna camp in (they got a bit lost in the middle because Mama thought the best way to learn things like this was to be allowed to make mistakes and work things out, so they didn’t tell her when she got it wrong or how to find the way to the right path, but that was ok because it was really fun) they had lunch, and then uncle Clint showed her how to put up a tent. They’d brought a tent with them, and sleeping bags and clothes and all their food and everything else they needed (it had made the bags really heavy, but Mama and uncle Clint took some of her stuff because she was smaller, and agent Daisy managed to carry her kit) because Clint said that made it proper camping. He said he and Mama would teach her how to make a shelter just from stuff from the forest tomorrow, but that for tonight they were going to sleep in the tent. Then he and Mama showed her how to build a firepit, and they walked around collecting armfuls of firewood and bringing it back, piling it into big piles of wood depending on size. Then Mama showed her how to make and light a fire (she used matches, but she promised to show Daisy a few ways to do it without them tomorrow) and then uncle Clint wrapped potatoes in foil and put them in the middle, and they got out pans and heated beans and soup on top of the fire.

The food was really good! Clint pretended to be offended at how surprised Daisy and Mama were, but Daisy could tell he was actually proud. He said he’d spent lots of time camping and cooking over fires when he was in the circus, so he could actually cook a bit with them. After the potatoes and beans and soup uncle Clint took out a packet of marshmallows and some chocolate and biscuits and they toasted marshmallows over the fire and it was _so fun_ and it tasted _so_ _ **good**_. Daisy wasn’t very good at toasting marshmallows because Mama wouldn’t let her too close to the fire and her arms weren’t very long, but Mama was really good at it. Uncle Clint kept setting his on fire because he tried to cook them too fast and put them too near the fire, and Mama took great satisfaction in laughing at him. In the end though Mama made a few really nice ones for him, since he ‘made the main meal without poisoning us’.

When evening came Mama took her off into the forest to pee, and then to the tap just at the edge of the forest to wash their hands and fill up their water bottles. When they got back uncle Clint went, and Mama and Daisy got changed in the tent, and laid out their sleeping mats and sleeping bags. They stood outside the tent when Clint got back so he could change too, and then helped him get his stuff ready too. Mama doused the fire and made sure it was completely out, and she told Daisy that she must never, ever leave a fire unattended, otherwise it could spread really fast.

Wiggling into her sleeping bag and resting her head on the bundle of clothes she was using as a pillow was fun. Mama and Clint used a torch and their hands to make shapes on the wall of the tent, and Clint told silly stories about the animal shapes they made, and Daisy fell asleep with a massive grin on her face and dreamed of shadow animals and s’mores and adventures in enemy territory with a brave spy and a handsome archer.

\--------------------

Daisy woke up when the sun came up, but stayed in her sleeping bag, wriggling deeper in to avoid the morning chill. Mama stirred, opened her eyes for a moment, clearly decided it was too early and went back to sleep. Daisy watched her with sleepy contentment. She liked this, just watching her Mama and uncle sleeping, with nothing going and all the excitement of the day still to come. She listened to birds singing outside the tent, and watched the patterns the sunlight made as it filtered through the side of the tent. It was lots nicer than mornings in the city. Everything was always noisy and rushed and busy then. It was peaceful and nice here. Sleepily, she let her eyes drift shut again, and the warmth of her sleeping bag and the birdsong lulled her back to sleep.

\---------

Daisy woke up to Clint shaking her, “Come on Daisychain, we’ve got sooooo much to do today! Come ooooon.”

“Give her a minute birdbrain, honestly, which one of you is the six year old?”

Daisy yawned, ignoring uncle Clint’s pout, and loosened her hold on the neck of the sleeping bag, only for cold air to trickle in and make her shiver. “It’s cold.” she whined.

“I know Pauchok, but I’m making kasha for breakfast, and that’ll be warm. And the faster you get up and get dressed the warmer you’ll be. Trust me.”

Daisy whimpered, trying to close the neck of the sleeping bag again and regain the warmth.

Mama shook her head “That’ll only prolong the agony sweetheart. Come one, I’ll help you so it’s quicker. Clint, can you close the tent flaps on your way out?”

Uncle Clint nodded, and vanished, leaving Mama behind to pull clothes out of a bag. Daisy eyed the rapidly growing pile of clothes Mama was making and had a nasty suspicion Mama was going to force her out of the sleeping bag as soon as all the clothes were laid out. She wasn’t wrong. Daisy squealed in protest as Mama efficiently located the zip and mercilessly pulled it down, letting in floods of cold air.

“ _Mamaaaa_ ”

“Come on, up, the quicker you’re dressed the warmer you’ll be.”

Daisy whined, but there was no point at all in trying to regain the sleeping bag warmth, so she jumped up and started yanking off her pyjamas as quickly as she could, stripping her top half and lifting her arms to let Mama put the clean clothes on her as quickly as possible before moving onto her bottom half. In a surprisingly short time she was bundled up in clean clothes, thick socks and a woolly jumper, with a hat pulled over her ears for good measure.

“See, that wasn’t so bad was it?” Mama said, a hint of teasing in her tone. 

Daisy pouted and nodded to show that it was, actually, ‘so bad’. Mama just laughed. “Come on Pauchok, the kasha’s probably done now.”

Daisy brightened, she liked kasha, and Mama didn’t often make it because it was a breakfast food and there was rarely time in the mornings. She shoved her feet into her boots and fumbled with the laces until they were sort of knotted (well, knotted enough to stay on, although she wasn’t so sure they’d come off).

It was even colder outside the tent than inside, and Daisy thought for a moment that they’d have to spend the entire day huddled by the fire, but Mama caught her expression and guessed what she was thinking. “It’ll warm up soon Pauchok, it’s just the early morning that’s this cold. Once the sun burns away the mist it’ll be warm.”

Daisy brightened further, and dropped down onto one of the seats (they were plastic bags held down by a few rocks, but uncle Clint called them seats) and smiled happily at Mama when she gave her some hand-sanitiser followed by a bowl of kasha. “Thank you Mama” she said happily, slipping into Russian because it was a Russian day. She couldn’t remember what language she’d been using earlier, but neither Mama nor her really bothered with remembering what language day it was supposed to be before they were properly awake.

Mama dropped onto another plastic bag, somehow managing to make it land lightly and make it look graceful (Daisy didn’t know how she managed it. None of her aunts and uncles could tell her, and Mama said that she ‘just did’), and rubbed hand-sanitiser over her hands before she started eating too. Uncle Clint already appeared to be halfway through his bowl.

“So, Daisychain, what do you want to do first? Climb some trees? Play some card games? Build a shelter? Find som...”

“Build a shelter!!!” Daisy interrupted, dropping her spoon back into the bowl, food forgotten. 

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” Mama said half-heartedly.

Daisy chewed and swallowed “Can we build a shelter? Please?”

“Of course, the Amazing Hawkeye is the best at building shelters. And then the Black Widow can teach you about finding food and living off the land.”

Daisy felt like she might vibrate off the ground with excitement “Can we find our own dinner???”

Uncle Clint winced, and Mama said firmly “No. Just because it’s possible to find food in a forest doesn’t mean it’s good food. And less of the survival skills Clint, this is a holiday, not boot camp.”

Mama was looking at Clint the way she did when she meant lots more than she was saying, and they had one of those conversations adults have where they don’t say anything (even signing) but say loads. Daisy scowled, it was really annoying when they did that.

“Ok” Clint said after a moment “we’ll build a shelter, and learn a bit about survival skills, and then we’ll play some silly games ok? And this evening I’ll teach you the names of some of the stars, and we’ll tell stories? Sound good?”

“ _YES_ ” Daisy answered, enthusiastically, jumping up to get started. 

“Finish your breakfast Daisy.” Mama said amusedly “None of us are doing anything until we’ve finished eating and Clint and I have finished the pan of coffee.”

Daisy peered at the little saucepan of black liquid, it was still half full. Her shoulder’s slumped in disappointment. They were gonna take aaaages.

\--------------------

Even though Mama and uncle Clint took ages to get started, it was the bestest most amazingest day _eveeeer_. Uncle Clint and Mama taught her how to find good branches to make a shelter out of, and how to whittle notches into them to make it sturdier, and use thin bendy branches to tie essential parts, and then how to weave smaller branches around the thick ones to make a lattice, and then fill it with even smaller lattice and cover it with leaves and moss. It took ages and ages but it was _so much fun_ and when it was finished it looked almost like it was just a pile of leaves and it was big enough for Daisy to lie down inside!!!

After lunch Mama and uncle Clint taught her how to always know which way was North and which way was South, and how to use a penknife to cut into trees and strip the outer bark away (to use to camouflage a shelter) and get to the inner bark which you could chew on if you were really hungry. Mama and uncle Clint both said it was really nasty though, and only for desperate measures, so Daisy didn’t try it. They taught her the signs to look for when she needed to find water, and that she must always, always boil water before she drank it, even if she felt like she might die of thirst, because water could have really nasty stuff in it. Uncle Clint even pointed out which mushrooms were edible and which weren’t, but he also made her promise to never try it herself because the wrong mushroom could make you really, really ill.

Uncle Clint waited until Mama went back to the campsite to get some food and then showed her how to make an animal trap with a good bit of rope, and cover it with leaves to make it hidden. Theyboth hid in the shelter and watched with bated breath as Mama came back, eyes narrowed with suspicion. Daisy held her breath to stifle her giggles so she wouldn’t give it away, but when Mama stepped into the pile of leaves and then tried to take another step (activating the trap) she burst into howls of laughter. The trap worked just like Clint said it would, the loop of rope tightening around her ankle, and yanking her up into the air, upside-down. Uncle Clint pressed the button on the camera, and then shoved it into Daisy’ s hands and ran for it, howling with laughter.

Daisy didn’t understand why he ran, because Mama was tied up, but Mama just pulled herself up, took a knife out of her boot, and slashed the rope. Daisy gulped back her giggles as Mama somehow landed on her feet. “It was his idea!”

Mama snorted, “Oh, of that I have no doubt. Delete that photo and I’ll spare you the revenge.” She offered, and then bolted after uncle Clint. Daisy looked at the camera (a thingy one that printed the photo instantly) and slipped the photo in her pocket instead. What Mama didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. And it wouldn’t hurt Daisy….probably.

She managed to hide the photo in her bag while uncle Clint and Mama played hide and go seek (aka Mama hunted down Clint and attempted to give him a mud bath), and then they played capture the flag and other games until evening fell and they made the campfire again. Mama kept her promise and showed Daisy how to light a fire without matches or a lighter, but Daisy wasn’t very good at it. They boiled pasta in a pan over the fire and heated sauce from a jar in another pan, and sat on the plastic bags again to eat. They finished the rest of the marshmallows (the chocolate had all been eaten the day before) afterwards, and then Mama laid a plastic sheet down on the grass and they all lay down on it. Uncle Clint started pointing out different stars and the shapes they made, but Daisy kept getting distracted, and her eyes were heavy and the grass was really comfortable, and she kept missing bits of what uncle Clint was saying.

\-----------

Daisy woke briefly when Mama picked her up, mumbling sleepily as her boots and jumper were taken off and she was tucked into a sleeping bag. Sleepily she murmured “G’nigh’ Mama, l’v’ you” and was asleep again before she could hear Mama whisper back “Love you too Pauchok.”

\-----------

Natasha wasn’t surprised her daughter fell asleep next to Clint. She’d been on the go since breakfast and she’d done a _lot_ in a single day. Nat was just glad that Daisy had fallen asleep when exhausted, rather than having a tantrum at something tiny, which had been a very real possibility. She was likely going to be a horror tomorrow anyway given how over tired she was bound to be, but that was a problem for tomorrow. For now, she nudged Clint until he fell silent and nodded to Daisy, smirking at the pout her partner gave when he realised his ‘student’ had fallen asleep. She gently unlaced her Pauchok’s boots and slipped them off her feet, then worked her arms under her daughter’s small body and carried her into the tent. Daisy half woke up when she moved her, mumbling sleepy and incoherent comments into Nat’s ribs. Nat set her down on the camp bed, eased off her jumper so she wouldn’t get too hot, and zipped her into the sleeping bag.

**==================**

**STOP READING HERE**

**==================**

Her daughter looked so small and vulnerable lying in the camp bed, and as her daughter mumbled that she loved her, Nat felt like there was something warm and precious and desperately fragile inside her. She didn’t think Daisy was still awake when she said it back, but she said it anyway, because love had never just been for children (and she had been a child when she’d been taught that, and she’d only been Daisy’s age and Daisy was so small and surely she hadn’t been like that, surely she hadn’t been that small and trusting and vulnerable when they took her to the red room. She couldn’t have been. She couldn’t.).

“You look like you’re contemplating the meaning of the universe.” Clint whispered, his voice quiet but audible in close quarters in the way only those who’d honed their skills to stay alive could make it.

“She’s so small.” Nat whispered back.

Clint glanced at Daisy “She _is_ six” he teased, but Nat didn’t smile.

The words slipped past her lips without her meaning to say them, low and almost inaudible, but holding a weight of devastation “So was I.”

Clint’s eyes widened, and she saw the dawning realisation (faster, much faster than she’d realised) of what was happening in his eyes, and he took her hand and lead her out and away from the tent, and then he sat down in the grass and pulled her into a hug that Nat didn’t even attempt to resist as the first ugly sob tore out of her chest.

She’d been six.

Clint wrapped his arms tight around her, grounding her even as she shook and cried and sobbed.

She’d been six.

She couldn’t get the picture of her daughter out of her mind. Daisy, body limp with sleep, barely waking as she was physically picked up and moved, unconcerned as a warm layer of clothing was taken and she was zipped into an enclosed space that left her vulnerable. The total trust her six year old gave her, even though she knew how dangerous she could be.

She’d been six.

Her throat ached as the sobs continued to rip free of her, shaking her entire tensed-up body as she remembered the way Daisy unquestioningly trusted her teachers at school, her friends, her friends’ parents. At the knowledge her daughter trusted most people just because they’d given her no reason not to.

She’d been six.

She couldn’t make her muscles unclench, couldn’t uncoil her body as she wept, remembering the way her whole being had frozen a week ago when she’d heard Daisy scream in pain. When, for a moment, she’d been paralysed with certainty that the red room had come, that the red room had taken Daisy, that the red room were hurting Daisy. Because Daisy was old enough.

She’d been six.

She’d been _six_.

She’d been six years old and she’d been as trusting and vulnerable and carefree and unbroken as Daisy.

She’d been _six_.

_Six_.

So she cried. She cried because she’d never cried about it. She cried because she’d never let herself think about it, not in terms of herself. She cried because, for a few weeks, before hunger and pain and fear became normal and any feeling of security was ripped from her, for a few weeks after the red room took her, she’d been a child.

She’d been six years old.

She’d been a child.

\---------------

Nat woke to dim light, gritty eyes, and a pounding headache. Her throat ached like she’d been screaming and crying, and for a moment she struggled to remember what the mission was, when it had gone south, where she was, and then it came flooding back. She peeled her eyes open to find the tent empty, and felt a trickle of relief as humiliation made her cheeks burn.

She’d cried on Clint. Not exactly for the first time, but she’d never cried like that where _anyone_ could see her before. She wasn’t sure she’d _ever_ cried like that before. Not that she could remember. Never cried with such pure, indescribable devastation. Cried like a wounded animal at the knowledge and feeling of loss, of something _integral_ and irreplaceable being torn from her, of being broken and hollowed out and unmade.

She hadn’t even suspected she could feel like that, that she’d been holding that down inside. That something like that had been waiting inside her to rip free.

They’d taken _everything_ from her. There was nothing she could do, nothing she could inflict that would ever undo or repay what they did. Even if she hunted down every last man and woman from the red room and tortured them to death, it wouldn’t repay what they did to her. What they took.

The thought made her feel cold and numb inside in a way that had nothing to do with the chilly air, and she hated it.

She was the Black Widow. She’d fought her way through the red room and come out the other side strong. Blood stained and forever tattooed with the guilt of the lives she took, but strong. She would never be weak again. She’d survived everything they’d done to her and lived to throw everything they taught her in their faces when she took Clint’s offer. She was Natasha Romanoff, and she didn’t need to be marble any longer. She was the Black Widow and she was strong.

Last night had been a blip, a moment of letting things out, but now she’d let it out and dealt with it and it was past. Nat was fine. She _was._

**===================**

**START READING HERE**

**===================**

She unzipped the sleeping bag, washed her face with wet-wipes, and got dressed. She emerged from the tent to find Daisy doing cartwheels around the field and Clint stirring something over the fire. Another pan lay next to the fire with a black mess in it that Nat assumed had been the first attempt at breakfast.

“Let me, I’m better at porridge than you.”

Clint let out a small shriek and dropped the wooden spoon. Nat snorted with laughter.

“The great Hawkeye: distracted by a pan of porridge!” she teased.

Clint scowled at her without heat and rescued the wooden spoon and offered it to Nat. “Feel free, can’t be worse than last time.” He said, gesturing at the blackened mess in the other pan.

“You’re cleaning that by the way” Nat informed him.

Clint groaned, but didn’t protest.

“What were you thinking about anyway?”

“Going back to work.” Clint admitted, dropping down to sit on his ‘seat’ and somehow managing to make it look both graceful and ridiculous at the same time. “It’s going to be strange getting back onto the field.”

“You’ve only been out six months” Nat observed.

“Six months can make a big difference in our line of work.” Clint pointed out.

“It can.” Nat agreed, waiting for Clint to say what he was pretty sure he was getting at. Clint didn’t though, so she said it instead (she knew what her partner needed, just as Clint had known what she needed last night. But she wasn’t thinking about last night. She was perfectly happy pretending last night never happened. She was fine.) “You didn’t have a kid last time you were on the field.”

Clint met her eyes briefly, and then looked down, shrugging. _It doesn’t make a difference._

“Ignoring it isn’t going to make it go away.” _It does._

“You can talk.” Clint retorted pointedly. _Are you just going to pretend you didn’t have the worst breakdown I’ve ever seen you have._

“We’re not talking about me.” _Yes, I am._

“Why not? You do that more than I do.” _Well I’m not. You need to talk about it._

“This is about you being realistic about making plans, not me.” _The fuck I need to talk. Stop changing the subject and avoiding your own issues._

“There is no making plans, _you_ taught me that in Budapest.” Clint snapped, voice suddenly openly annoyed, and Nat felt the words hit.

She flung the spoon back in the pan. “Make your own damn breakfast.” She snapped and stalked off towards where Daisy was still turning cartwheels, even though she knew it was an admission of hurt.

Clint swore at her back, one of the dozens of swearwords they’d learned from that book of Maria’s that Daisy didn’t understand, but this time he wasn’t joking. Nat threw a nasty hand-gesture behind her and pretended she felt neither hurt nor guilty.

\--------------

Nat calmed down significantly by the time she and Daisy got to the tap to fill their water bottles (the best excuse she could come up with in the moment), and she detoured to the shop down the road from the tap that they’d passed on the way there and bought breakfast, knowing Clint would have burned the second attempt by now. Clint was terrible at porridge at the best of times, and this wasn’t it.

Clint was trying to scrape the pans out when they got back, glaring at it like it had personally offended him. Nat held out the packet of cereal bars in silent apology, and after a moment Clint took it.

“Sorry about breakfast.” _Sorry I pushed._

“Not like I’m any better at cooking, obviously.” _I’m sorry too._

“Want a hand with the pans later?” _Are we ok?_

Clint shot her an exasperated look and a nod. _Of course we’re ok idiot._

Nat rolled her eyes back. _Birdbrain._

\----------------

By the time they’d eaten breakfast, scraped and cleaned out the pans as best they could (Clint had certainly done a thorough job of it), put the tent down and packed everything up, their spat was all but forgotten. Daisy was every bit as tired and cranky as Nat had expected her to be, and wrangling her took almost as much work as taking the campsite down. Nat held onto her patience only with a force of will, despite her own exhaustion, and almost let out a sigh of relief when Daisy asked if she could have the map again for the way back. That would at least keep Daisy busy and focussed on something for the walk back to the farm.

They walked in steady silence for an hour before Nat lost her patience.

“Just spit it out Clint.”

“I didn’t say anything.” He pointed out.

“Yeah, you were ‘not saying anything’ very loudly.”

Clint snorted and for a moment they both felt light again, before they sobered “Nat, you need to talk to someone, last night, Nat I’ve never seen you like that. Ever.” _I’m worried about you._

“I’m fine Clint, last night was, was, I just needed to feel it, just once, so I could let it go.” She said, and it was awkward and not quite true but it was the best she could do.

Clint gave her a disbelieving look and Nat sighed “I’m fine Clint, I promise.” And she means it and it’s true but…

“Ok, I believe you Nat.” _I know you’re ok now, but if it happens again, that’s ok, I’ll be here._

Nat met his eyes “I know.” _I know you didn’t mean it earlier. I know you trust me._

She saw something in Clint’s shoulders relax imperceptibly and moved on before the moment could become mushy. Best to get it all dealt with while they weren’t pretending their issues didn’t exist. “You’ve got a kid at home who depends on you to come home safe now. What are you going to do about it?” She said, not leaving Clint room to wriggle away from the question.

Clint huffed a little but didn’t try to dodge the question. The pause lengthened into silence but Nat didn’t pester him. He’d answer when he was ready. Finally Clint sighed “I don’t sacrifice myself for you and you don’t for me.”

Nat bit her lip, and she wanted to nod and agree and move on, she wanted to so much, but she’d broken Clint’s trust that way once before, and Clint might regret reminding her of that this morning, but she still remembered. She couldn’t do that again. “Clint…we both know we won’t keep to that.”

Clint winced “What else is there to do? We both know we’re not leaving the field.”

Nat tipped her head to the side, conceding the point, and silence fell again for a while.

“We give the other blanket permission to tell both Phil and Laura if we’re reckless in the field.” Clint said suddenly.

Nat opened her mouth to tell Clint that that was a terrible idea, cringing internally, and then realised that was probably the point. “That would be…” she trailed off, unable to find the words.

“Painfully effective?” Clint suggested.

“You’re suggesting we willingly subject each other to Phil’s disappointed looks and Laura’s guilt trip lectures. Painful doesn’t begin to describe it.” Nat groaned.

“So we’re doing it then?”

“We’re doing it.” Nat agreed reluctantly. The ‘for Daisy and Cooper’ went unsaid. It didn’t need saying.

“And if the worst does happen...”

“It won’t,” Nat said firmly, “but yes, _obviously_ I’ll look after Laura and Cooper.”

“And I’ll look after Daisy.”

“Like I said, obviously. You know Laura is named as Daisy’s guardian if I die right?”

Clint’s slow blink said that he had not, in fact, known. Nat shrugged, playing it off “I’d have named you but I figured if I was dead chances were you were too. And Fury and Phil and Maria’s lives are barely less dangerous than ours. So, Laura.”

“She really is the most sensible of all of us isn’t she.”

“Hmmm, not sure about that, she _did_ marry _you_.”

“ _HEY!!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit odd, sorry. Trauma is kind of like that though, and healing is never linear, so I sort of like how this chapter came out. 
> 
> Comments make me happy.


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Romanoff's return to Washington with Clint in tow and the rest of the summer begins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning, serious trigger warning for panic attacks and past child abuse, I've written a fairly vivid account of a panic attack from the perspective of the person experiencing it. 
> 
> If that will (or even might possibly) trigger you, PLEASE DO NOT READ. I've marked it and have summarized in the end notes. It's part of the same subplot as the bit I warned about in the last chapter and it's not integral to the main plot.

Laura had managed fine (albeit a bit more tired) with Cooper while they’d been gone, so they stuck to the plan and Clint left with them back to DC when Nat and Daisy left three days later. Daisy was over the moon about it, having not been told earlier in case things hadn’t worked out, even though both Nat and Clint warned her that Clint would only be staying a week and would be spending almost all of that time in intense training and tests to get him cleared for the field again.

As expected, Clint spent most of the week running between intense training courses and gruelling tests, only coming back to the apartment for a few hours of exhausted sleep, usually on the couch because it was closer than Nat’s bedroom. Daisy invariably woke him every morning with a delighted tackle hug that knocked most of the breath out of him but did get him out of bed. Nat made no comment, either good or bad, on the behaviour but took several photos. She had a sneaking suspicion she was going to live to regret not telling Daisy off for it though.

Once awake (and breathing properly again), they sat down for a hurried breakfast (in which Clint persisted in his frankly disgusting habit of using coffee rather than milk in cereal) before Clint took a borrowed motorbike back to shield for his next round of training and tests. Nat, after dropping Daisy off with Jennifer, joined him an hour later on some of the tests, but refused to do all of them. Unlike her partner she was still fully certified and cleared for all missions, and just because Clint had decided to try to get re-certified in a crazy short amount of time did not mean she had to join him.

Plus, Nat had her own problems. Jennifer and Roy, while they were being hugely helpful this week in looking after Daisy along with Tobi and their other two, could not continue doing it for long. They were currently switching off days of work and childcare, but neither had enough vacation saved up to last the summer and didn’t want to spend all their vacation days on that anyway.

Jasmine, their youngest, was now old enough to go to the nursery where Jennifer worked, and they were planning on sending their two elder kids to a summer program as soon as it started up. Jennifer had suggested sending Daisy there as well. She said that it was a great program, both fun and educational, and both her kids had been before and loved it, but that wasn’t what Nat was worried about. She was worried if it was safe. The summer program was a lot less controlled than the school. While they didn’t let just anyone walk into the building, it was located beside a park where they often took the kids, and they often had guest teachers come in to do workshops with the kids. Quite apart from that, kids could be signed up to the program at any point during the summer until the program was full, which meant that she couldn’t vet the people who would be near her Pauchok before she made a decision.

Unfortunately, she had to do something. She didn’t have many vacation days left, and on balance, she considered bringing Daisy with her to the Triskelion riskier. While she had brought Daisy to the Triskelion with her before, she’d done her best to be discreet with it, and it wasn’t a long-term solution. She didn’t want anybody to know that Daisy was there, especially not a building full of spies, agents and hundreds of people with dubious morals. In this case, the unknown threat was better than the known one. Not to mention the fact that Natasha was determined to keep Daisy as separate from this life as she could. Maybe if Daisy grew up more normally she would stop wanting to be an agent when she grew up. The summer program was, unfortunately, the best option. Which didn’t unfortunately make it a good option.

Not that Nat had usually been presented with good options in her life, she was very familiar with making the best of a bad set of options. So she made the best of it. To start with she hacked the summer school and set up a hidden program to extract names from their files, compare them with security footage, and run them through the shield database, which would pick up anyone mentioned in any law enforcement report and flag any cover identity that wasn’t very, very good. This was of course, thoroughly illegal, but what Phil and Maria didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Then she broke in overnight (also very illegal) and installed her own security cameras (even more illegal) and a few listening devices (about the same level of illegal). For good measure, she embedded trackers into Daisy’s shoes to supplement the tracker and panic button embedded in the bracelet Daisy wore at all times. Only then did she sign Daisy up.

Daisy for her part was delighted. She’d been begging to join the program with Tobi all week and was so hyper when she heard she was literally vibrating. In hindsight, Nat reflected, telling her daughter very exciting news half an hour before bedtime may have been a tactical mistake.

\--------------

Daisy almost cried when uncle Clint left again. Mama warned her that she wouldn’t see much of him during the week because he had lots of work things to do, but she hadn’t realised just how little Mama meant. Uncle Clint was only around in the morning, and even though she got to wake him up every morning (Mama thought she didn’t see her laughing the first time, but she’d seen the amusement on her face so she thought it was safe to do it again) he disappeared only half an hour later to go to work, and Daisy was always in bed by the time he got back.

It wasn’t fair, uncle Phil and aunt Maria were keeping him all day, and then he’d go back to the farm and only go into work for missions, and Daisy wouldn’t see him for months and months again. It sucked. Uncle Clint spent all morning playing with Daisy the day he left, and it was really fun even though he was yawning all the time, but then he had to go and Daisy almost cried. But if Daisy cried Mama would be even sadder, and Daisy didn’t want Mama to feel sadder so she held her breath and thought about happy things until her eyes didn’t feel so wet anymore.

Mama played with her for most of the rest of the day, saying that the paperwork she needed to do could wait, and even better, she told her in the evening that she’d signed Daisy up for the summer program! Tobi was going to the program too, and he said there were lots of activities and games and you could choose classes and try new things and all the leaders were really nice and it sounded so much fun and she’d been begging and begging Mama to let her go but Mama had just said that they’d see. But now she was going to go and it was going to be soooooooo fuuuuun and it was going to be the bestest funest summer ever! Even if she _had_ lost three days dessert because she was too excited to go to bed.

The summer program was four weeks long, but it wouldn’t start for another half a week, so Daisy spent another three days with Tobi’s family. She wanted to go into the Triskelion with Mama, but Mama had said no in that voice she used when she really meant it and no amount of begging would change her mind, so Daisy had dropped it. Playing with Tobi’s family was ok, it was fun, and she liked playing with Tobi, even if it wasn’t as cool as playing agent. Going shopping wasn’t fun though, going shopping was really boring. Mama went with her and Tobi’s family on Monday, because Mama said Daisy needed new summer clothes.

Daisy disagreed; her summer clothes were fine. So what if they were a little shorter, and tighter, she could still get into them, and the there weren’t _that_ many stains or rips in them. But Mama made her go anyway, even taking a day off work for it. The only silver lining was that Tobi hated shopping as much as she did, and they could sign comments at each other across the shop as long as their parents weren’t looking (or in Mama’s case, pretending not to notice, Daisy wasn’t dumb enough to think Mama didn’t notice _everything_ ). And Mama and auntie Jennifer and uncle Roy let them have McDonalds for lunch. But it was still really boring and took foreeeever. Daisy hoped they didn’t have to do this again for at least five years.

But then two days later it was finally time to start the program!!! Mama looked kinda nervous the first day, which was silly because Daisy went to school all the time, and it wasn’t that new, and Daisy was the one actually doing it. Daisy didn’t mention it though, because good agents didn’t antagonise their colleagues (Daisy had heard uncle Phil say that to Mama and uncle Clint lots of times after they pranked someone, and it sounded like a good idea but Mama and uncle Clint didn’t seem to think so, so Daisy wasn’t 100% sure), so she just hugged Mama goodbye and followed Tobi in.

The program was even better than Tobi had described! There were about 150 kids in it, split into age groups at first (Tobi said that would go into activity groups later, depending on what activities they picked), and they played lots of getting to know you games. They threw a ball around, calling the names of the people they were throwing it to, and played lots of games Daisy had never played before (except she was Skye here, and she mustn’t forget that, Mama said it was really important she never forgot). They played Simon Says last, and Daisy won. The leader said that Simon said to do a handstand, so she’d done one, only nobody else had and the leader said she’d been joking, but that was really impressive, and Daisy had felt really proud. She was the bestest agent in training.

After that, Daisy and Tobi’s group went to the ‘Craft Hall’ and started making puppets! There were loads of sheets of felt and fabric and the leaders said they could make any puppet they wanted! The first day though they just focussed on making the shape of the puppet. They were all given pieces of felt in the shape of people, but without the legs and with extra big heads, and the leaders showed them how to thread a needle (only they were little plastic needles that weren’t really sharp, not like the needles Daisy remembered from when she was really little and Mama and uncle Clint would sew each others skin. She wanted to ask if there were special needles for every kind of sewing, but she thought maybe sewing skin might be an agenty thing and she shouldn’t ask) and sew the felt pieces together. Daisy didn’t think she was very good at sewing, and her pieces looked kinda funny when she finished, but the leader said it was very good so Daisy figured it was ok. One of the other kids sewed across the hand hole and had to restart, so Daisy decided hers was good enough.

After that they had lunch, which was just sandwiches and juice, but there was cake afterwards so Daisy was happy. Mama didn’t make cake, hadn’t even tried for a long time even though she was growing braver at trying to cook new things. Daisy wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing, because Mama tended to need at least five tries to make something edible, and it didn’t generally taste good even then.

After lunch they picked their activities for the week. Tobi said you chose an activity for the whole week, and once you’d picked it you couldn’t change, so to pick carefully. There were lots of activities to choose from, but Daisy only listened to the list until she heard the word ‘coding’ and instantly decided to do that. She almost regretted it when she realised that all the other kids in the activity were 10 or 11 year olds, but she liked coding and so what if she was different to the others. The leader said she could do it! He also said that he’d introduce Daisy to something once he set everyone else up, but Daisy didn’t bother telling him she could keep up. She’d learned from computer club at school that teachers tended to need showing before they believed her. It was mean, adults (normal adults anyway) expected you to believe whatever you told them, but then they didn’t believe her! It was stupid anyway, why would she lie when she’d be found out so easily? That was terrible practice, only baby agents told lies when they could easily be made. The coding that the leader showed them wasn’t even as hard as some of the stuff Daisy did in computer club anyway, and she was finished lots before the others, so the leader ended up showing her something else to do anyway. Daisy felt rather smug, but she didn’t let it show because that tended to wind adults up.

Daisy really liked the coding activity, it had been ages and ages since she’d been allowed to spend so much time coding, and she’d get to do it again four more times!!! She didn’t notice when leaving time came until Mama waved a hand in front of the screen, a teasing look on her face.

They walked home, because it wasn’t that far from the apartment and Mama said they could get ice-cream since it was the first day. Daisy’s ice-cream almost melted though, because she wanted to tell Mama all about her day and about the puppets and the Simon Says and the coding and she almost forgot about the ice-cream. Mama laughed when she heard how Daisy had won Simon Says and said she was glad Daisy was having fun. She did make Daisy promise not to hack anything in the coding activity though. Mama said that she really meant it and if Daisy hacked anything (and she’d know, Mama somehow _always_ knew) she would take her out of the program immediately. Daisy decided not to tell Mama she’d been tempted to. She hadn’t been going to actually do it (probably), and Mama didn’t need to know because she was definitely not going to do it now.

\---------------------

Nat was glad Daisy was enjoying the summer program so much, even though she still felt worried leaving her Pauchok there every day. Daisy’s enthusiasm was contagious though, and Nat enjoyed her daughter’s daily excited rambling about what she’d done that day.

On the third day of the summer program Nat and Clint got a mission, flying across the country to hunt down someone who had stolen a load of data from the CIA and then gone on the run. On a hunch, rather than go to his last known location and track him, Nat and Clint went to where Nat suspected he was going and picked him up there. She brushed off Phil’s praise over a good mission and tried to ignore the creeping feeling that she’d been a little too sure about her hunch. She got back to DC a couple of hours after Maria had put Daisy to bed and made up the couch because it would be silly for Maria to go home that late. She mades kasha in the morning and threatened not to give Maria any when she asked Daisy if it was edible. It wasn’t until two days later when she finds a dozen boxes of frozen meals in the freezer that realised Maria cooked at least three different dishes of food while she was gone and froze most of it. She wasn’t sure whether to be touched or offended. She bought Maria a packet of the strongest coffee she can find on her next mission and left it on her desk as a cross between a ‘thank you’ and a ‘I’m not the only one with a questionable diet – you live off caffeine’. Phil told her a week and two missions later that Maria adored the coffee and kept it in her safe with a couple spare firearms and the most important paperwork. Nat made a mental note to get another bag when she’s in an appropriate country again, just in case she ever needs to bribe Maria.

Daisy’s first week at the summer program ends, and she comes back from her first day of the second week complaining a little about the fact that she isn’t allowed to do an activity for two weeks and can’t do coding again. But by the second day she’s almost forgotten about it, too busy telling Nat all about how much fun she’s having with Tobi in the music activity. They are both doing ‘introduction to drums’ and Nat _knows_ this is going to come back to bite her. She shares a wince with Jennifer or Roy when they go to pick their kids up from the music room and Nat makes non-committal noises when Daisy asks if she can keep learning drums after summer. The parenting books said learning an instrument was good for kids but _drums_?? She’s almost relieved to get a mission on Wednesday that gets her away from Daisy’s pleading (and hence from having to make a decision) for a few days. Phil bursts out laughing when she tells him about it and says that it would ‘serve her right’. Nat splutters until Phil says ‘shield mafia’ and she shuts up. On reflection, there could be a lot worse things Daisy could get into.

Strike Team Delta are being sent to help another team with what had previously been their mission. It was a level 2 team that had been sent to infiltrate a terrorist organisation but had gotten far enough in to hear whispers of something big in the works, but couldn’t get any further. Nat was being sent in to work her way up quickly, and Clint was being sent because chances were high that it was all going to go spectacularly wrong and he would be needed as backup.

The mission goes remarkably smoothly, but Nat feels on edge the entire time. She keeps having strange feelings of deja-vu, or hunches that always turn out to be right. Every so often she keeps feeling she knew what was about to be said or done before it happened, and while she can’t possibly know that (she’s good, but she’s not _that_ good) she can’t shake the feeling that she _does_. By the time she finally gets high enough to work out the big thing that was about to go down (which really wasn’t as big as the whispers had made it sound) it is a relief to hand the op over to the right people to deal with quietly.

She can’t shake the feeling of unease though, and it doesn’t help that she is tired from getting only three hours of sleep two nights in a row (spending the rest of the night snooping). Clint gives her concerned looks but she has no answer she can give him for why she’s on edge from a, frankly, easy mission. She lands back in DC an hour before the summer school finishes and she sends Phil a text to say he doesn’t need to pick her up and tiredly changes out of her ‘Andrea Blenth’ clothes and into her own before heading for her car. She gets there five minutes early and heads over to where Jennifer was waiting, tucking her tiredness away where it wasn’t obvious.

“Hey Natalie, wasn’t expecting to see you today. How was work?”

“Tiring.” Nat answered honestly, “Any idea what activities Skye, Tobi and James picked this week?”

“James was planning on doing the soccer activity, I don’t know about Skye and Tobi yet, Tobi said they were planning on picking the same activity again, but hadn’t decided which.”

“At least it can’t be worse than drums.” Nat said wryly.

“That’s true. Is Skye begging you to get her a drum kit too?”

“She’s asking for lessons actually, I don’t think she’s actually fussed whether she plays on a drum or an upside down bucket. What do you think of it?”

The wince on Jennifer’s face was the only answer she needed and Nat absurdly felt a little better. At least she wasn’t the only one having to deal with this! “Maybe we could introduce them to the flute or something?” Jennifer suggested.

“That’s not going to work.” Nat pointed out. It might have worked if they’d started with the flute, but not when they’d started with the drums.

“I can dream.” Jennifer said, “I think they’re about the open the doors, lets see what they’ve gotten into this time.”

Nat glanced over to see that they were in fact opening the doors “This is your fault by the way, I hope you know that.” She said, but without heat.

“Please, don’t pretend you’re not happy Skye’s having fun, and you had to send her to do something.”

**==================**

**STOP READING HERE**

**==================**

Nat made a non-committal noise and headed to the desk to ask what room Skye was in. She was apparently in the upstairs sports room, and Tobi was there too so she headed up there with Jennifer. She was still looking forward to a quiet (as much as any evening with a six year old was quiet) evening catching up with Daisy when she opened the sports room door and the world stopped.

There was a moment, between her seeing the first kid and her eyes landing on her Pauchok, when some part of her mind understood what was about to happen and _**screamed**_. Then her eyes landed on Daisy and everything changed. Daisy, her little girl, her small, fragile child, in a blue ballet frock, body held in second position.

The red room had come.

The red room had Daisy.

It was over.

Through the rushing in her ears she registered someone taking her arm, steering her out of the room. She didn’t fight. They had Daisy. They had her daughter. It was over. She would do whatever they told her to do. Anything, anything to stop them hurting her baby.

But they were going to hurt her anyway. Natasha – no, not Natasha, she would never be allowed to use Natasha again, she was Natalia – knew the red room, knew they would hurt her whatever she did. They’d already started. They’d make her dance and dance and dance until the pain and fear was all she knew and they’d kill her friends in front of her and make her dance on as she died inside. They’d take her name and her memories and everything that made her Daisy and they’d hurt her Pauchok like they’d hurt her. They’d make her kill and torture and, and….she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t _breathe_!!!

They’d given her something. They’d given her something and they were making her weak and they were going to take her mind again and she couldn’t breathe and they had Daisy and they were going to unmake her and they were going to remake Natalia and they were going to make her kill and they _had Daisy_ and they were going to destroy her and she _couldn’t breathe and they_ _ **had Daisy**_ _!_

Daisy. Daisy. She had to protect her daughter. She had to protect Daisy. She had to try. She had to try. She had to try before they made her forget. Forget. Forget. They could make her forget Daisy. They could take her from even her memories. No. Nononononono. “Please. Please don’t take her. Please. Not Daisy. Please. I’ll be good. Please. Not Daisy. Pleasepleasepleaseplease I’ll never fight you again please not Daisy. Not Daisy please. Please not Daisy. Not my baby please she’s just a baby please not Daisy please please please don’t hurt her. Don’t hurt Daisy please I’ll do anything please please not Daisy please.”

She couldn’t see, she couldn’t breathe, she could feel her heart pounding like she was running for her life but there’d be no more running ever because they had Daisy and whatever they’d given her was strong and they were going to take her away and they were going to take her mind and they were going to take Daisy and “please no please not Daisy please please. Don’t hurt her please I’ll be good please please please. Take me, hurt me, just not Daisy, please please not Daisy please I’ll never run again just let her go please please please. Just let her go please please don’t hurt her please not my baby please.”  
  


“No Daisy! Take her out of here! Get her out!”

“NOOO, Mama!”

Natalia screamed, recognising her daughter’s cry even over the pounding of her heart and the rush in her ears. They were hurting Daisy, they were hurting her Pauchok, her baby. No. Nonononononononoooooo. “ _DAISY!!!!!”_

“ _MAMA”_

And then Daisy was in her arms, Daisy was in her arms and she was scared and crying but Daisy was with her and she could protect her and Daisy was hugging her and she was alright and her Pauchok was alright and _her Pauchok was alright_. Daisy was in her arms and she could breathe and she could _breathe_ and Daisy was here and Daisy was ok and she could breathe. Air was coming in in shaky gasps but she wasn’t choking and Daisy was here and Daisy was ok and the world was starting to come into focus again and Daisy was in her arms and nobody was taking her away and Daisy was still wearing the ballet frock but it was the wrong shade of blue and the shoes were wrong and her hair was wrong and this wasn’t the red room.

The realisation flowed through her mind like a flood of oxygen, dizzying with relief.

This wasn’t the red room.

This wasn’t the red room.

Daisy was safe.

She was safe.

Nobody was going to hurt them.

Nobody was going to unmake them.

Nobody was going to drag her back to the red room.

They were _safe._

Dimly, through the lingering panic and dizzying relief, she registered that Daisy was crying and so was she, and that Jennifer was hovering over her with a panicked and lost expression. Humiliation and embarrassment and guilt stabbed through her like a knife, and she forced her face to blank, and then settle into a small smile that was as fake as any smile she’d given when she was Natalia.

“I’m ok Daisy, I’m ok, I’m sorry, I’m ok.” She murmured to Daisy, shifting from her balled up position on the floor (and when had _that_ happened?) to pull Daisy into her lap and rock her gently, despite the angry protest of her muscles. How long had she been balled up on the floor panicking? How much had she said? How many people had heard? How compromised were they?

She kept murmuring gently to Daisy, whispering that she was ok and it was going to be fine and endless lies until she could almost believe it herself. She looked at Jennifer, now sitting on the floor looking worried. She must have seen the plea for information in her eyes because she started talking, “I saw the look on your face when we went to pick the kids up and, I don’t know, I just thought it might be a good idea to get you out of there. I brought you to the first empty room I found and closed the door. I didn’t realise you weren’t aware of what was happening until you, um, started talking. Someone came looking for us and asked what was happening. I, um, I told them you had PTSD from breaking your arm and you were having a flashback, I hope that’s ok? I don’t know how Daisy found us or got in here.”

“I saw Mama leave an’ when she didn’t come back I opened lotsa doors.” Daisy said, voice a little shaky.

Natasha nodded at Jennifer, trying to communicate her gratitude with her eyes. “I’m sorry I scared you Daisy.” She whispered, trying to keep the weight of guilt she felt out of her voice. How could she be so stupid? She’d just seen a ballet frock and, and, lost it. She was the Black Widow for fucks sake, she was trained to take in her surroundings and understand what was going on in a second, not see one thing and jump to conclusions.

“It’s ok Mama, you couldn’t help it.” Daisy said, leaning her head against her shoulder for a moment before she wriggled until Nat let her go so she could get up. “Can we get ice cream? Ice cream makes everything better.”

“Yeah Pauchok, I think we can get ice cream.”

“We can get some on the way back to mine.” Jennifer said, voice gentle but expression telling Nat she was absolutely serious.

Nat shook her head, too weary to think about much but getting home and maybe locking all the locks in the place “I need to be at home.”

“Ok, we’ll get some ice-cream on the way to mine to drop off James and Tobi, and then we’ll go to yours.” Jennifer stated.

Nat thought for a moment about protesting, but she was just too tired, physically, mentally and emotionally. “Ok.” She said, and wished her voice didn’t come out so small.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Daisy's new activity is dancing, and Nat sees Daisy dancing wearing a blue ballet dress (like in the red room) and loses it, thinking the red room has Daisy. Jennifer takes her out when she freezes and into an empty room where Nat has a pretty bad panic attack and doesn't calm down until Daisy finds them and has a bit of her own meltdown and hugs her. Nat starts to calm down once she is physically holding Daisy and can tell that Daisy isn't hurt. Jennifer decides that she's not leaving Nat alone after that and goes home with Nat and Daisy. 
> 
> I'm sorry if I've represented panic attacks badly. I've had anxiety attacks, but not panic attacks so if I've got it wrong I'm very happy to change it if someone lets me know. 
> 
> Sorry there's been so much angst in recent chapters. I promise there is fluff coming.
> 
> Comments make me happy :-)


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat and Jennifer talk, school starts again, and Maria makes a mistake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for discussion of childhood abuse and trauma at the beginning of this chapter. Please don't read if this will trigger you, I've marked where to start reading. This should be the last bit dealing with this subplot, and I'll summarize in the end notes.
> 
> After that there is finally some of the promised fluff!

By the time they had driven to Jennifer’s, getting ice-cream on the way, and Jennifer had spoken to Roy and then loaded Nat and Daisy back into the car and driven to the apartment, she’d run out of the little energy she had left. Jennifer had shoved her towards her room and told her to sleep, and Nat had opened her mouth to protest being mothered like she was six but a yawn had come out instead and Daisy had started giggling so Nat supposed it was ok.

Daisy woke her for supper (Jennifer had reheated one of Maria’s boxes of food from the freezer), and she felt a decent bit better. Enough better to hide how shaken she was from Daisy and ask her about her day, and how the lastest bit of arts and crafts they were doing was going, and laugh at the appropriate places in stories. She gave Daisy a bath afterwards, and made sure she brushed her teeth, read her a bedtime story and tucked her into bed before returning to the main room, mentally gathering herself for the conversation she knew had to happen.

Jennifer had made coffee, which was good because she felt like she was going to need it for this conversation. She took a mug out of the cupboard and filled it before flopping down onto one of the bean bag chairs and stretching her feet out.

“I don’t understand how you manage to do that without spilling your drink everywhere.” Jennifer said, shaking her head as she sat down distinctly more carefully.

Nat cracked a grin, but didn’t say anything, waiting for Jennifer to ask the questions she was clearly thinking.

“So, Daisy huh” Jennifer said.

Nat winced “I’d appreciate if you didn’t tell anyone that.”

Jennifer hummed “It makes sense I guess, if people could come after her because of your job. Is your name really Natalie?”

Nat weighed her answer, then decided it was probably ok “No, but I’d prefer if you call me that.”

“Ok” Jennifer said with a shrug, sipping at her coffee while she thought. Eventually she asked “Are you safe?”

Nat internally winced, took a deep gulp of her coffee (and wished it was something stronger, even if that probably wouldn’t be a good idea for this conversation) and finally answered, choosing her words carefully “I am, I’m not on mission at the moment so I’m as safe as anyone in this life ever gets. Earlier was, um, it was about something else.”

Jennifer didn’t look convinced “Are you sure? Because earlier you seemed pretty damn sure that someone was going to hurt you and Skye.”

Nat swallowed hard, eyes fastened on the mug of coffee in her hands “I, um, I thought something had happened earlier, but, um, I hadn’t thought it through and, uh, obviously nothing had.”

“What did you think had happened?” Jennifer asked.

Nat swallowed, she could make Jennifer back off if she wanted to, she knew her friend would leave it if she asked. But Nat wasn’t sure she actually did want her to, in some morbid way she wanted to know what would happen if she told her friend the truth, or the rough outline of it anyway. Would she leave? Would she call the police? What would someone unconnected to the blood and scars and grey areas people like her operated in think of her? It would be a stupid thing to do, if it went wrong she’d have to uproot Daisy and move somewhere else, and it was unlikely she could make another cover as good as this one once it got out she’d tried before. It would be a stupid decision.

But she’d kind of already made it. “They used to make us dance in the Red-Room.” She said finally.

“Huh?”

Another day Nat might have laughed at the look of confusion on her friends face, but today her lips just twitched a bit. “The Red-Room was the place I was trained, and uhm, and the place I was raised.”

“ _Raised?_ ” Jennifer said, eyebrows shooting up.

Nat nodded “It was a training program, in Russia, it’s been around since the 40s in one form or another. They uhm, ‘recruit’ girls, usually five or six years old, and they train them to be spies and, well, assassins.”

Jennifer’s eyes were wide, her face a mask of horror. Her voice shook when she spoke “When you say recruit?”

Nat snorted, her voice bitter when she spoke “It was just as dodgy as it sounds. Some of us were kidnapped, others sold by their parents, some taken out of orphanages or off the streets. Some of us agreed to join without knowing what it was we were joining. It didn’t matter though, once you were brought to the Red-Room you didn’t leave except for certain bits of training or for missions, not until you graduated. Even if you died you didn’t leave, they buried the bodies on the grounds.”

Jennifer yanked in a sharp breath “Some died?”

Nat couldn’t look at her, she registered that her hands were shaking slightly, but couldn’t quite make it stop. It felt awful and wonderful and terrifying and freeing to talk about. To tell it to someone who didn’t already know, to see someone react with the horror she’d never known to feel. “Most died.” She admitted, and it felt like pulling poison out of her bones, letting it fall out of her mouth with the words. “One of my earliest memories is being six and dancing in the lower hall. They’d make us dance for hours and hours and hours, sometimes all day and all night. I think it was the first time they did that to us, my memory. I remember being in pain, so much pain, but I knew I couldn’t stop and I knew I mustn’t fall. One of the other girls did though, she fell and she wouldn’t, maybe couldn’t, get up. So they shot her dead. I don’t even remember her name. Nobody ever mentioned her again.”

“They killed her? Just, just for being tired?” Jennifer breathed, her voice disbelieving, not wanting to believe. Nat suddenly realised that Jennifer might not be able to deal with knowing this.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“No, no I want to know, I want to help. Just, just give me a moment.”

Nat nodded, sipping at her coffee in silence. After a moment Jennifer spoke again. “How did you get out?”

“I didn’t, not until six years ago.” Nat said, trying to make her voice sound strong but instead it came out small and nervous instead.

Jennifer gasped “But, but then you spent your entire childhood in that place!”

“I wasn’t a child. None of us were children, not after watching people, our friends before we learned not to have those, die.”

Jennifer opened her mouth, but then seemed to change her mind about what she was going to say. “So what happened?”

Nat shrugged “I made it through training without dying. I was one of the few, most, almost all, the girls in my class died. Sometimes I think they were the lucky ones. They at least got to rest, to be at peace. But I wanted to live, they made all of us want to live, taught us to fight and claw for it, and I did. I was one of the best in my class. It wasn’t always a good thing. I was the first to become an adult. None of us were children but, um, in the Red-Room you officially became an adult after your first blood - your first kill. I was ten. They brought a man in with a bag on his head. Told me he was a traitor. I believed them then, I didn’t know any better. I killed him. I was ten and I remember I didn’t want to, not really, but it was him or me and I wanted to live. By the end of that year there were only twelve of us left, the others wouldn’t do it, or messed up in training, or got hurt and died from it. One of the girls, Sveta, tried to run. And others, um, well, they said that weakness wouldn’t be tolerated, and sometimes, sometimes they’d select a pair – a strong one and a weak one -, and, uhm, and they’d make us fight, to the death. That was always the worst. We could never have friends, never help each other, because we never knew if we’d have to kill each other, to survive. I killed seven of the other girls before I graduated.”

She risked a glance up at Jennifer, whose face was a mask of horror, and suddenly Nat was certain that Jennifer was going to hate her, be disgusted by her. “Say something, please?”

“It wasn’t your fault.” Jennifer said, and the relief that Jennifer didn’t hate her was dizzying.

“Yes it was.” Natasha said, matter of factly. “I had a choice, I could have chosen to die.”

“That’s not a choice Natalie, or whatever your name is, not for a child, even if trauma made you older than you really were.”

Nat looked down at the ground again and shrugged “Agree to disagree. Anyway, I got out eventually. I graduated and went to work for the KGB and got sent on missions more often. We got sent on ‘training missions’ before, but after I graduated it was full time. I, I killed a lot of people, and handed over the intelligence that probably got many more killed. But then I got pregnant. I wasn’t supposed to be able to. They sterilised all the graduates, they, they didn’t want us to have kids. I think they were worried it could be the one thing more important than a mission. I guess they were right because when it came down to it, when I realised I was pregnant, I didn’t report it. I managed to get myself on a really long running mission, and I had Daisy during it, and when the mission finished, I didn’t come back. They’d put programming in my head, lots of it, but somehow Daisy was still more important, and deep inside I knew, if they ever got hold of Daisy, they’d either kill her or raise her to be just like me. So I went rogue. Became a mercenary for a while, killed more people. I’m, I’m not a good person. You deserve to know that. I’m not a good person. I only got out to save my daughter. I have a lot of red in my ledger. I’ve killed a lot of people, a lot of innocents. The people I work for now, they put a kill order out for me, sent their best agent after me. He was supposed to kill me but he ended up recruiting me instead. His organisation undid the programming in my head, gave me my mind and free will back. I’ve been working ever since to undo the red in my ledger. And protect my daughter at the same time.”

Jennifer didn’t say anything for several long seconds, just tipping her mug up in the way that people did when they were getting the last bits out. “I don’t think you’re a bad person.” She said finally “You’ve done bad things, I’m not going to argue with that, but if you were a bad person I don’t think you’d stick around and try to make up for those bad things. And I don’t think you could raise Sk-Daisy to be such an amazing person if you were a bad person.”

Nat snorted “Daisy is a miracle I can’t explain, in more ways than one. It amazes me every day how kind and happy and caring she is. That has far more to do with the people who have helped me raise her than it has to do with me.”

“You don’t give yourself nearly enough credit.” Jennifer said firmly.

Nat shrugged again “Agree to disagree.”

“You can’t just say that whenever you don’t want to admit you’re wrong.”

“I can actually, especially when I’m not wrong.” Nat said, smirking slightly.

Jennifer snorted, then “Are you ok? That’s a lot to talk about after the day you’ve had.”

Nat shrugged “I’m ok. I actually kind of feel lighter. I’ve never really told anyone about it. Most of the people I know in my organisation have read my file and already know all of it, even the rookies tend to know I used to be KGB and defected.”

Jennifer raised an eyebrow “Firstly, have they not sent you to therapy? Because seriously, you should go. Secondly, are you really that well known?”

“They tried, and yes, although infamous is a better word than well known. There’s a reason my organisation had a kill order out on me, and they weren’t the only organisation.”

“Do I want to know what ‘they tried’ means?”

Nat let a smirk spread across her face “I kept scaring them off, and then I refused to talk about anything other than parenting difficulties, and then I scared another off, and then after we moved I started testing out cover identities on my new therapist and got diagnosed with multiple personality disorder.”

Jennifer looked like she didn’t know whether to laugh or scold, and her mouth opened and closed like a goldfish.

Nat snickered “My boss wasn’t especially happy but she was the one who made me go so….”

Jennifer shook her head, “You’re something else.”

“Yeah” Nat said, a little sad and a little proud and a little resigned “I am.”

\----------------

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**START READING HERE**

**===================**

Jennifer picked Daisy up from the program every day for the rest of the week, meeting Mama outside. Daisy wasn’t completely sure what happened that day Mama came to pick her up, but when she’d found Mama she’d been curled up tight on the floor and breathing really fast and whimpering a lot and talking too fast for Daisy to understand. She asked Mama about it, and she said she had a panic attack because she remembered something that had happened before. Daisy wasn’t sure what a panic attack was, but she didn’t want to ask Mama so she waited for her next therapy appointment which was on the weekend. She offered to swap activities, even though she wasn’t sure she was allowed to do that, but Mama said she didn’t want Daisy to miss out and that instead Jennifer would pick her up. Daisy compromised by not telling Mama all about it afterwards, and Mama didn’t ask so Daisy supposed it was ok. Ballet wasn’t as fun as coding or music anyway. Tobi said he wanted to try the swimming activity next week, so Daisy thought she’d probably do that with him.

She told her therapist about it on Saturday, and Daisy learned what a panic attack was. They talked about how maybe Daisy had had a panic attack that evening Mama had to back to work for the first time after she’d been hurt, and how to deal with them, and how seeing Mama have a panic attack had made Daisy feel. She felt lots better after the appointment, but she hoped Mama didn’t have another panic attack, they sounded like they really sucked.

After the appointment they went to get ice cream like they always did, and walked around the park nearest the apartment eating them. Daisy eyed the swings in the playground across the park and thought about asking to go play after she finished her ice cream. She was going to get high enough to flip the swings one day. She just needed to get a little higher. She’d do it. Someday. Not today though, she wanted to ask Mama something.

“Mama?”

“Hmm Pauchok?”

“Did the baddies who taught you to be an agent teach you to dance?”

Mama froze. Not for long, only a split second, but Daisy was used to watching for the tiny things that showed what Mama was thinking. Usually, the little things showed she was amused, or tired, but Daisy didn’t think it was either of those this time.

“Yes they did, why do you ask?”

Daisy shrugged, licking her ice cream “You looked really scared when you saw me dancing. Is that why you don’t want me to go to agent school? Because I could get hurt?”

Mama stopped walking, and turned to crouch down so she was at Daisy’s height “That’s part of it Pauchok, but even if you wouldn’t get hurt, even if I could be certain of that, I still wouldn’t let you.”

Daisy fought the urge to pout, even though she hadn’t been asking with the hope of going to agent school “Why not?”

“Because I want you to have a normal childhood, a normal life.”

“So I’m better at undercover.”

“No, so you can be normal, so you understand what normal is, so that you have the option to just be normal. I want you to have that choice, to have all the choices I can give you, and all the opportunities I can give you.”

Daisy bit her lip until Mama tapped it to remind her not to. “Is that because you didn’t have a choice?” she asked. She’d suspected it for a long time. From little things she’d heard on the helicarrier, from the way Mama never talked about her childhood (even uncle Clint talked about his childhood sometimes and Clint’s dad was a bully), and the way Mama seemed to be experiencing lots of things for the first time just like Daisy, like she’d never lived in the normal world either. Daisy was observant, grandpa Fury said so, and she was the bestest agent and she’d suspected for ages and ages that Mama hadn’t had a happy childhood, and then Mama had mentioned that she’d been trained by baddies, and Daisy had wondered if she’d known they were baddies when she joined, or if she’d joined at all.

Daisy saw Mama hesitate, like she wasn’t sure whether to answer or not, but then Mama nodded and said “Partly sweetheart, but I would want you to have all of that anyway, because I love you Pauchok.”

Daisy smiled “I love you too Mama! How did you escape the baddies?”

“That’s a story for another day, when you’re much older Pauchok. Finish your ice-cream before it melts.” Daisy could tell from Mama’s voice that she really meant it, so she finished her ice cream and didn’t bring it up again. She told Mama that she thought she’d try the swimming activity next week, and Mama said that sounded like a good idea. They spent the rest of the walk home remembering the water park and the games uncle Clint had taught them while Daisy was learning to swim and Daisy wore her swimming costume to bed under her pyjamas to check it still fit ok. It did, which was good because she might have had to change her mind about swimming if it involved another shopping trip.

\--------------

The fourth and final week of the summer program rushed past, and before either Nat and Daisy knew it there was only a week left of the summer holiday. Jennifer and the rest of their family went away on holiday for the last week of summer, while Nat and Phil switched off days to go into the Triskelion and to do what work they could at home while watching Daisy.

Daisy proved herself to have inherited her mother’s knack for manipulation by somehow managing to sweet talk Phil into making her chocolate waffles with maple syrup for lunch, something Nat wasn’t sure how her daughter could even enjoy but which left her still hyper three hours later when Nat went to pick her up. Phil looked slightly shell shocked and like he’d probably learned his lesson, but Nat made extra sure by sweet talking sci-tech into lending her one of their prototypes (it hadn’t taken her long to make friends with sci-tech at the Triskelion – as soon as they realised she was perfectly happy to test out any and all prototypes for them they were happy to accommodate even obviously questionable favours like lending her prototype mechanical tarantulas) robot spiders and left it in Phil’s office a couple of days later. Unfortunately the little robot didn’t stay in Phil’s office and instead made its way through the vents to Maria’s office where it proceeded to pick all the locks in the office and scan all the papers it found. In hindsight, she should probably have asked what _else_ the robot did before asking to borrow it. On the bright side, sci-tech were delighted to learn their robot worked (and had even managed to find a high-ranking office as programmed). On the less bright side she got a lecture (which she didn’t particularly care about) and at least four hours of paperwork (which she did) from Maria.

The next week school finally restarted and Daisy went into second grade with Tobi, Millie and Dan, the latter two of which Daisy was delighted to see again. Nat was just relieved not to have to worry about child-care as much.

She got a mission two days into the school term and flew off to France with Clint to track down a guy Shield had finally gotten a lead on who’d been hacking into government agencies around the world and adding snarky comments to their highly classified documents. It took three days to track him down but once they had the mission was over in hours. Off a computer the guy was about as threatening as a new born puppy and bored out of his mind with his day job. It didn’t take long for Nat and Clint to convince him to sign on to Shield (as long as he could physically stay with his family in France most of the time) and they flew him back to the Triskelion for orientation.

Clint came back to the apartment to stay the night and they both celebrated Daisy losing her first tooth. Nat (having heard about the tooth fairy from Jennifer telling her about doing it for Tobi) stuck some money under Daisy’s pillow and Clint went back in afterwards because apparently you were supposed to take the tooth as well as leave the money. Daisy straight up asked her in the morning if it had been her who’d left the money because ‘I’m not a civilian Mama, I know the tooth fairy isn’t real’ and Nat just shrugged and said she’d thought Daisy would enjoy having the money anyway. Daisy did and hugged her happily, announcing she was saving up for a water-pistol (a headache Nat would deal with when she got to it). Clint looked like somebody had kicked his puppy. Nat wondered aloud whether most parents lied to their kids for years about things like that and apparently that was in fact what most parents did. Nat decided that was stupid and said so.

Nat and Clint got three more missions in quick succession over the next two weeks and after the third Clint was starting to look more perky. Nat wasn’t sure whether she should be worried or not that Clint was getting more sleep on mission than he was at home. Apparently Cooper was having something called four month sleep regression, something Nat hadn’t even realised was a thing (possibly because she hadn’t exactly been getting a lot of sleep herself when Daisy was that age). Clint called Laura after the third op wrapped up like he did after every op and reported back to Nat that Laura had been driven to try Clint’s trick of putting coffee in his cereal and said it was ‘absolutely vile how can you eat this stuff???’. Nat sent Clint back with the packet of extra strong coffee she’d bought to bribe Maria with and got a text the next day from Laura saying she was the ‘best sister-in-law on the entire planet.

Daisy lost her second front tooth and developed a bite and twist technique of eating to manage without her two top incisors. Her class started a new project and Daisy came home with paint in her hair for three days in a row and, as a bonus, came home with a letter from her teacher to sign because she’d emptied her entire bottle of water over another kid’s head. Nat sternly asked her what she’d told her about dealing with bullies herself, to which her daughter responded ‘I promised not to punch anyone Mama, and I _didn’t_ punch him!’. Nat removed two days of dessert privileges and managed to hold her laughter in until Daisy was in bed and asleep and she could bury her head in a pillow.

The beginning of October brought with it a more long-running mission, expected to take up to two weeks, and to which Clint turned up to with an impressive bruise on his cheekbone. Apparently Cooper was getting the hang of waving things around and rattles could inflict an impressive amount of damage. Nat thought about not teasing him for it for about half a second and then asked Phil if she could have a new partner who couldn’t be taken out by a five month old. Phil just sighed and asked them to please behave and sent them to get briefed.

It wasn’t a deep cover mission, just an undercover one (Nat was undercover as a secretary and it consisted of entirely too much paperwork), and Nat got to call Daisy every evening which was nice. Daisy told her on the third evening that ‘Mama, I got married to Tobi today, so now we can be together forever and ever and _ever_ but Tobi’s mom said we can’t live together now and that sucks.’ and Nat managed not to laugh for the whole rest of the phone call and then dropped onto her bed and laughed until she literally cried and Clint wanted to know ‘what on earth is so funny’ but she couldn’t get enough air in to tell him.

The op went South a week and a half in, which would have felt pretty normal except for the creeping feeling that it was all familiar and she and Clint had done all of this before down to the exact steps they took. Which she couldn’t possibly know because they hadn’t done it before and she couldn’t see the future.

(Unless this wasn’t real and this was all a dream and it was happening this way because she expected it to. But that would mean that the Red Room had her again and had done something to her mind and her dream about Hunan was real and her daughter was dead and she wasn’t, she couldn’t be, so Nat had to be imagining it. No, she _was_ imagining it.)

It takes them two days to deal with the fallout of it all going South and wrap up the op and then they both head to their respective homes about on schedule. Nat got home to find that Daisy had saved up enough pocket money for the water pistol she wanted, and Maria had _let her buy it_. She dealt with this by suggesting to Daisy that it was an excellent prop to wake Maria up with when she next stayed with her and making Daisy promise not to shoot her with it. Daisy, who had a healthy sense of self preservation and instinct of when she was completely out-skilled, promised. Maria still out skilled her but had the advantage of being rather like a zombie in the morning before she had at least two mugs (or one extra strong mug) of coffee. 

Daisy asked if they could go trick or treating and Nat said she didn’t see why not and they spent the next week and a bit making their costumes. Nat cashed in a favour with sci-tech and managed to get a decent amount of strong glow in the dark paint, which they paired with black fabric and balaclavas to make two skeleton costumes that glowed eerily. They joined up with Jennifer, who was taking Tobi and James out trick or treating, and went to the same places she was taking her kids. All three kids and Nat were in costume, making Jennifer look like she had four kids. They got an impressive amount of candy and Daisy was almost impossible to get to bed afterwards, despite the late hour when they got back, but Nat found she’d rather enjoyed it and kind of liked having a collection of sweets to snack on. Sneaking up behind Jennifer, in costume, and tapping her on the shoulder had been especially fun. Nat could of course have sent a text saying they’d arrived instead of giving her friend a heart attack, but who was she to turn down a perfectly good opportunity? 

Early November brought with it several more missions, and Nat was growing to truly loathe the feeling of deja-vu that constantly haunted her. The unease wouldn’t even leave her alone off missions anymore, and she couldn’t shake the creeping feeling that something was wrong with her head. It wasn’t like it would be the first time.

(But if this wasn’t real then Daisy was dead, and Nat couldn’t bear to think about that so she tried not to think about anyone messing with her head at all. Daisy was alive. Daisy was fine. She was. She _was_.

She had to be.)

Early November bleeds into late November and Nat gets a call from Maria on mission to tell her Daisy had been sent home from school with another letter and “Do you want me to forge your signature?”

“Sure, just make sure it’s a good forgery. What’s the letter for anyway?”

Maria paused for long enough to tell Nat that this wasn’t going to be anything good, and then said “Daisy’s class have been taking it in turns to bring something in for ‘show-and-tell’”

Nat had a sinking feeling “Please tell me she didn’t bring in something classified? Or a gun or something?”

“You have classified information and guns lying around where Daisy can get to them???”

“Of course not, I leave anything dangerous in the safe, and I lock the classified stuff away.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Daisy is remarkably resourceful, and stop dodging the question Maria, I’m not an idiot. _What did she do_?”

A pause, and then reluctantly “She brought in lock-picks, and, um, demonstrated using them.”

Nat paused, took a deep breath, and said “I’m going to kill Clint. Then Daisy. Then Clint again.”

“Please don’t, good agents are hard to come by. And Phil would give me those disappointed looks of his for weeks.”

“No promi…wait, why would he give _you_ disappointed looks? Hang on, Daisy’s lock-picks are in the safe, and I’ve got mine with me, so _whose lock-picks did she take to school???_ ”

There was a short, but extremely telling, silence. 

“ _Maria_ ”

“I didn’t realise she’d taken them!!”

“You left lock-picks lying around and you, what, expected her to ignore them? She’s _Clint’s niece_!!!”

There was a short silence “Don’t tell Phil and I’ll give you a free pass on your next prank.”

“Next three.”

“Two.”

“Three”

“Two”

“Nope, you let a six year old steal your lock-picks and take them to school, which _I_ will have to deal with when I get back. Three.”

“ _Fine_. Please don’t burn down the base.”

“Great. Pleasure doing business with you.”

“I’d say likewise but…”

“Yeah yeah, now could you put Daisy on please, I’ve got a few words to have with her before I go and throttle my partner.”

“Just don’t compromise the mission.”

“When have I ever?”

“When you had to kiss him.”

“I thought we were never speaking of that again?”

“No, you and Clint were never speaking of that again, the rest of us made no such promises.”

“Just put Daisy on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary of beginning bit: Nat talks about the Red Room, telling Jennifer about the program, how she was raised, and how she defected. 
> 
> (I know everyone already knows this, but I don't think I've ever read a fic where Nat talks about it for herself, willingly, because she needs to for herself, and for a lot of people, talking about it is part of actually dealing with trauma, so I wanted to put it in)
> 
> Comments make me happy :-)


	30. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy has a birthday party, Nat realizes that recklessness runs in the family, and a visitor arrives

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for injury and hospitals, not sure if I've warned about that when I've written about injuries before but better late than never right? Nothing graphic, but if that bothers you please don't read. I've marked it and summarized in the end notes.  
> At some point I'll have a chapter without a trigger warning! Probably!
> 
> This one is really long, it was either going to make 2 shorter chapters or 1 really long one, and I decided to keep it together :-)

The third of December was officially Skye Smythe’s seventh birthday, and Daisy asked if she could have a birthday party. After some questioning of Jennifer, about what birthday parties generally entailed, Nat decided that there was no way she was having a bunch of kids in the apartment. Instead she suggests to Daisy a trip to a trampoline park and gets a look of such delight Nat doesn’t need her to say anything. They only invite Tobi, Millie and Dan but all of them get permission to come and Jennifer agrees to help chaperone. They prepare a ‘Colour the nose on the paper donkey Nat and Jennifer will hold above your head so you have to bounce up’ game, and a ‘pass the newspaper ball’ game, plus ‘musical trampolines’ and ‘duck, duck, bounce’ games that required less preparation.

\-------------

Daisy had never had a birthday party before and she was _really excited_! She’d wanted to ask Mama for an agent party, but she didn’t think that would be keeping her cover. She’d already messed up when she brought the lock-picks into school. She hadn’t really thought it through when she saw the lock-picks on the counter, she’d just remembered how much fun they were and how cool it would be to bring it into show-and-tell. She hadn’t _meant_ to cause trouble, but Mama was really mad and she’d lost a whole week of dessert. So she’d just asked for a birthday party, not an agent party, and then Mama had suggested something even _better_!!! Mama said there were _whole buildings_ full of trampolines and they could _go in them_. Apparently she’d booked one for one of her bosses on mission when she’d been undercover as a secretary and had thought Daisy might like to try them. Daisy thought Mama kind of wanted to try herself and that was why she’d suggested it, but she didn’t say that just in case Mama changed her mind. Daisy didn’t think she would, but she wanted to be safe because Mama was going to take her and Tobi and Millie and Dan to a building _full of trampolines_!!!

Mama had decided the party should be on Saturday, because it would be easier, even though the third of December was a Thursday, but Daisy didn’t think it mattered because it wasn’t really her birthday anyway. On Friday she and Tobi and Dan and Millie were so excited they had to be told to stop talking twice, but they didn’t get into any real trouble so it was ok. One of the other kids asked why they were so excited but Daisy told him it was classified because it wasn’t nice to tell people about parties they weren’t invited to. He went and asked the teacher what classified meant and he said it it referred to some advertisements in the newspaper, which was dumb because that’s not what classified means but Daisy was too excited about Saturday to care much. 

Finally, Saturday came and they could go to a real actual building _full of trampolines_! Daisy was up even before Mama was up even though usually Daisy didn’t want to get up in the morning and Mama had to coax her out of bed for school. But trampolines were lots and lots and lots more exciting than school and Daisy was up and dressed before Mama even left her room. Mama said she should calm down though, because if she didn’t she’d run out of energy before they even left the house, and wouldn’t have any energy left to bounce. Daisy didn’t feel like she could _ever_ run out of energy, but Mama was usually right and a good agent didn’t waste energy that they’d need later so Daisy sat down and tried to stop ‘bouncing around the house like an over-excited puppy’. She put some more food into Nutella’s food bowl, even though Nutella hadn’t been around very often recently. It wasn’t that unusual for Nutella though, she often disappeared for ages and ages at a time and she always came back eventually. Uncle Clint said Nutella was like Mama in that, but Daisy didn’t need to be an agent in training to know it wasn’t a good idea to repeat _that_. 

Mama made kasha for breakfast, even though it took longer than cereal, because she said it was a special occasion even though it wasn’t _really_ her birthday. Daisy ate two whole bowls of kasha because a good agent stocked up on energy before a big mission, and because it tasted really good. Daisy didn’t really understand how Mama could be so good at cooking a few dishes and so terrible at all the rest of cooking. She’d asked uncle Phil but he’d just shrugged and said there were some mysteries that just can’t be answered, and to be glad Mama hadn’t burned the apartment down yet. Daisy had decided not to point out how unreassuringly ‘yet’ was. 

After breakfast Daisy helped Mama wash up to make it quicker, and then finally they were ready to go. They drove to the school to pick up Millie, Tobi and Jennifer (Dan’s dad was going to drop him off at the trampoline park on the way to work cause he had a Saturday shift and there were only five seats in the car.) and then to the trampoline park. Dan arrived only a couple of minutes later, and then they could finally all go in!! 

The trampoline park was even better than Daisy had imagined! There were lots and lots of little trampolines in a grid, and an area with a big trampoline where you could launch yourself into a pit full of foam squares, and another pit with a bar across it where you could try and knock the other person off with foam bats and a dodgeball area and it all looked sooo fun! Mama and Tobi’s mom said they should all go try things out first, and they’d play party games later and to ‘go wild and burn some energy off’ first. 

Daisy made sure her special grippy socks were on properly because an agent should always check her kit before going into the field, and then jumped onto the nearest trampoline and bounced deeper into the park, the others spreading out around her. They bounced around every single small trampoline, and then bounce-jumped into the foam pit a few times, and then had a competition of who could survive the longest on the balance bar. Mama joined in that one, and won, even though Daisy and Tobi and Millie and Dan and even Tobi’s mom all tried to knock her off at the same time (two on the bar and three throwing foam cubes from the pit). They had a rematch where Mama was only allowed to stand on one leg and use one arm, but Mama still won because Mama was the bestest agent. A worker at the trampoline park came over to tell them off after that though, cause they were only really supposed to have two people on the balance bar at once, so they had to stop. 

They played ‘Colour the nose on the donkey’ after that. Mama said it was usually called ‘pin the tale on the donkey’ but they’d renamed it while preparing it. Daisy had played ‘pin the tale on the donkey’ before (on her real sixth birthday, when Mama had pinned the tail on auntie Maria), but that had been on the ground. That time they’d been blindfolded and spun round, and then had to put a pin into a donkey they couldn’t see. This time they could see the paper with the donkey drawn on it but it was held up above their heads and they had to jump up and try to colour the nose in. Dan won that, because he was the best at reaching out with the pen at the right time. 

Then they played ‘Duck, duck, bounce’ and then ‘Musical trampolines’ (which was kind of like musical statues only you got three seconds to stop bouncing and try to be still, and the player who was least still was out) and then finished with ‘Pass the parcel’ where you had to throw the newspaper ball while bouncing, and when the music stopped they’d take a layer off. There were little promise notes for suckers between the layers but no sweets, cause you weren’t allowed to eat in the trampoline park, and in the middle there was a little teddy bear that Tobi won. Mama said that she’d thought about putting a can of coke in, but hadn’t, and Millie, Dan and Tobi all giggled. Daisy asked why it was funny and Mama grinned that grin she had when she was planning to prank someone and said she’d give uncle Caleb a can of coke sometime and get him to show her. Daisy had a feeling that there was a reason Mama wasn’t offering to show her herself and giggled. 

They went to play dodgeball after that, with Daisy, Dan and Mama on one team and Millie, Tobi and Tobi’s mom on the other. Tobi’s mom turned out to be a pretty good shot, and fairly good at dodging, and she got both Daisy and Dan out before they could get any of them out, but then Mama grabbed all the balls she could get and got all three of them out. Daisy suspected Mama had been holding back at the beginning (and maybe at the end too), but it was probably more fun that was so she didn’t call Mama on it. She thought it would be fun to see Mama and uncle Clint play against each other. They only had five more minutes before their time ran out after that, so they spent it bouncing as much as they possibly could on the little trampolines, and then all trooped off to go put their shoes back on. Daisy’s legs ached like she’d done two fighting lessons with Mama back to back but it had been worth it!

\----------------

After the party everything felt kinda flat and boring, even though it was almost the end of the semester and they were doing lots of Christmas stuff at school. Nothing was really as exciting as a birthday party, especially after a trampoline birthday party. To make it worse the weather had gone really cold, and it had started to rain and rain and rain and rain and Daisy hated it. It wasn’t even the fun sorta rain that came down really fast and sounded like someone was drumming on the window, and which you could run through and laugh. It was just constant, and cold, and it sucked. Daisy wanted it to snow, everything was better when it snowed, but it stubbornly remained rain. They couldn’t go outside at recess or lunch at school, and indoor games weren’t as fun as outdoor ones. 

Mama said they could go up to the farm the week after Christmas, but she couldn’t get Christmas off this year. She said they’d just celebrate a week later with uncle Clint and auntie Laura and Cooper, but Daisy didn’t think it was really the same. Still, she made cards for all her uncles and aunts, and for grandpa Fury. It had been ages and ages since she’d seen grandpa Fury, not since he visited the Triskelion and came to see Mama afterwards, and that was months and months ago before the summer holidays. Daisy couldn’t believe it was only a year since they moved, it felt lots longer than that. She’d learned so much about what normal looked like and how to stay undercover, and she’d made friends and gone to birthday parties and done lots and lots of arts and crafts. Agent school was probably cooler though. Daisy would bet agents didn’t have to stay indoors just cause it rained. Or have to redo English homework cause they forgot and wrote it in Russian. 

“You know glaring at the paper won’t make it write itself don’t you Pauchok?”

Daisy huffed across the room at Mama, who was sitting at her desk writing up a mission report. “This isn’t _faiir_ , I already did it.” She complained. 

Mama just raised an unimpressed eyebrow at her “Then it shouldn’t take long to do it again. You’d be done by now if you had started when I told you to.”

Daisy huffed again. She knew Mama was right, but just because it was true didn’t mean she had to _say it_. She contemplated writing it in code for a moment. She’d been learning about code from a book in the library, and practising with Tobi and Millie and Dan, so they could all have a secret language to write in, and it was really fun. But Mama would only make her do it again if she did that, and she’d probably get in trouble too. Mama didn’t really like it when she whined, and she knew she was getting pretty close to outright disobeying Mama, and that would get her into proper trouble. So she moodily picked the pencil up again and started writing, writing her English assignment in English this time. Dumb teacher. Just cause _he_ couldn’t read Russian shouldn’t mean _she_ can’t use it. 

When she was finally done though, Mama let her have a bit of cake for snack (from the supermarket, otherwise that might have been a punishment), and even better, the rain finally, finally stopped. Mama didn’t take much convincing to abandon her paperwork and leave. Daisy didn’t think Mama enjoyed staying indoors any more than Daisy did, even though she said they had to or Daisy would get sick.

But finally the rain had stopped and they could go outside again. Daisy put on her boots and tied the laces tightly (she was getting better at laces), and pulled Mama along towards the playground impatiently. This time, she was determined to flip the swing. Today was the day, she knew it. She’d thought other day's were gonna be the day, but today was different. Today she was going to do it. 

**==================**

**STOP READING HERE**

**==================**

There were already a few other kids and parents in the playground, others clearly also wanting to take advantage of the lack of rain, probably because it might not last long. Daisy hoped the rain wouldn’t come back, but she thought it probably would. She made a beeline for the swings and waited impatiently for one to become free. There were only two, and there were already kids using them, but finally it was her turn and she could hop on. She took a sneaky look across the park at Mama, making sure she wasn’t watching too closely. Mama didn’t like when she swung too high, she said it was dangerous even though Daisy always gripped really, really tight. Mama was talking to another parent (well, even from across the playground Daisy could recognise Mama’s ‘I don’t want to talk to you but it’s more trouble than it’s worth to stop you’ look, but the important thing was that she was distracted) so Daisy didn’t waste any time. She swung her legs as hard as she could, leaning back and then forwards to make the swing go higher and higher and higher. 

She loved the swings when it was like this, it was almost like flying, and somehow it was even better after the rain. The air smelled damp and new, and the wind was cold but brilliant against her face. She swung her legs to push herself higher still, pretending not to hear when Mama called for her not to go so high. Bother, clearly Mama wasn’t distracted enough. She saw her get up and start across the playground but she was almost there, she could feel it, and it would be worth getting into trouble if she could finally… “ _SKYE SMYTHE, GET DOWN HERE._ ”

Ooops, Mama was really mad now. But she was _almost_ there! The swing was rising above the bar each time and it felt like flying and she just needed a little more and she gave one last hard pump of her legs and…for a second, one brilliant second as the swing moved up but backwards, Daisy thought she was going to manage it. Then the swing ran out of momentum and jolted down, the chain jarring in her grip and then she was flying forwards, but she wasn’t in the swing anymore. In a second, that felt like so much longer, Daisy saw Mama explode into a run, understood what was about to happen, and _screamed_.

\-------------

The scream was the worst sound Natasha had ever heard. She’d been watching Daisy with one eye even while putting up with the other parent and called for her to stop going so high when Daisy started going higher than was wise. Daisy always did this, always trying to go as high as possible, but she’d always listened when Nat told her to stop. She’d always listened. Except this time she didn’t and in the seconds it took her to realise that Daisy was ignoring her Daisy had passed risky and was getting dangerously high. She shouted again, as firmly as she could this time, even as she headed over, but Daisy still wasn’t listening and _why wasn’t she listening_ and _oh_ _ **fuck**_. 

She’d heard a lot of terrible sounds in her life. Heard people scream in pain as they were tortured, heard people scream as _she_ tortured them. Screams that still rang in her ears years and years after those people had died. Screams that haunted her but paled in comparison to the sound of her daughter’s terror. 

For a moment, as she sprinted, she thought she might be able to make it, and then the thump of Daisy’s body hitting the ground replaced the scream as the worst sound she’d ever heard. Daisy had tucked in and rolled, her small body going over and over on the ground and Nat was never so thankful that she’d taught her daughter how to fall safely but she’d hit the ground so hard and she wasn’t moving anymore and _**no, please no**_.

She screamed for someone to call an ambulance even as she fell to her knees beside her daughter’s crumpled body, fingers searching desperately for a pulse. The relief when she found it, strong beneath her fingers, was barely stronger than the horror as she registered blood flowing over her fingers from a gash on Daisy’s head. Dimly she heard someone say the ambulance was on it’s way, and she made herself respond, made herself nod. She wondered if she should call shield, have her taken to shield medical, but shield doctors were specialised in adults and mission injuries and Daisy was only six and she looked so small and oh fuck, oh fuck, she needed to pull herself together. She needed to pretend this was a mission, she needed to be calm. 

The next few hours were a blur that Natasha would never really want to remember. She managed to calm down, pulling an eery mission calm over her frantic panic and work with the paramedics when the ambulance arrived. She remembered the right questions to ask and held her daughter’s hand in the ambulance and tried not to think of how still and pale and silent her Pauchok was. She held her calm all through Daisy being treated, scanned, and treated again, and held it together until Phil turned up at the hospital. She couldn’t even remember calling him, but he was there and suddenly Nat couldn’t be calm anymore and then she was crying, and Phil was holding her, and she fell apart. 

A mild concussion. A fractured wrist. Spectacular bruises and scrapes. That was the sum total of Daisy’s injuries and it could have been so, so much worse and it wasn’t but for seconds that had felt like an entire lifetime she’d thought her daughter was dead and it had felt familiar to the core of herself. 

She’d thought Daisy was dead and some part of her had _howled_ with the agonised knowledge that it was right. 

So despite everything, despite the other people around, despite the fact that she was Natasha Romanoff, despite the fact that she was the Black Widow, despite the fact that she should never show weakness like this, despite everything, Natasha fell apart in Phil’s arms and cried until her eyes and throat throbbed.

\------------

When Daisy woke up her head hurt, and her arm hurt, and she ached all over. She was in a white room with several other beds that looked kind of like medical on the helicarrier. Mama was asleep in a chair on one side of the bed and uncle Phil was awake in a chair on the other, watching the room. His gaze flickered over to Daisy and then away again, and then they suddenly snapped back to her and a smile spread across his face when he saw she was awake. 

“Hey munchkin, you scared us.” He said, and then Mama was stirring and uncle Phil went off somewhere and came back with a cup of weird chips that turned out to be ice and feel really good in her dry mouth. 

“Mama? Where are we? What happened? Why does my head hurt?”

Mama made a choked sound, and then a sort of gulping sound and then said “You’re in hospital sweetheart, you fell off the swing.”

Now that Mama said it Daisy remembered. She remembered Mama shouting for her to come down, and the certainty that today was going to be the day she managed to flip the swing. She didn’t remember falling off. Given the way her head was aching, maybe she didn’t want to remember. “Did I flip the swing?” she asked.

“No, just threw yourself off it.” Mama said, suddenly looking fiercer and more furious than Daisy had ever seen her, except maybe for that time at the farm when she’d hurt her hand on the oven and Mama and Clint had run down with guns “And you are _never, ever, ever_ to try again, is that clear Daisy Maria Romanoff?” Her voice lowered enough that nobody else could hear her name, but the danger in her voice was no less pronounced. Daisy was in _big_ _trouble_.

She gulped “Yes Mama, very clear.”

“Good. You’re grounded by the way.”

Daisy had kind of taken that as a given. “How long for?”

“Until you’re 18. At least.” Mama said, but Daisy didn’t think she was serious. She didn’t think now was a good time to check though. 

“Why does my head hurt?”

Mama calmed down at that question, her expression becoming less furious and more gentle “You hit your head really hard Pauchok, I’ll go and ask someone for some painkillers though.”

She kissed Daisy on the cheek gently, the expression of affection rare in a public context, and left.

“Is Mama ok?” Daisy asked uncle Phil.

“She was a little worried about you” Phil said, which wasn’t really an answer, but Daisy didn’t push. Uncle Phil was impossible to get information out of if he’d decided not to share it.

“Am I really grounded until I’m 18?”

“I don’t think so munchkin, but I bet you are grounded until that cast comes off.”

“I have a cast?”

“Look at your left wrist.” Uncle Phil said. 

Daisy automatically tried to lift her wrist up, but found it was heavier than expected, and she looked down to find a blue cast on it. “Is it broken?” she asked. Her stomach felt funny. She’d never broken a bone before. Bones weren’t supposed to be broken.

“No, only fractured.” Uncle Phil said, and then, because Daisy looked confused “Your bone is a little broken, but not broken all the way through. It has to be in a cast though.”

“Oh” Daisy said, not really knowing how to feel about that. 

Mama came back a moment later though, followed by a nurse, and they gave Daisy some more painkillers, and Mama told her a story to take her mind off the pain until they started working. They made Daisy really sleepy, and she couldn’t keep her eyes open even though she wanted to hear the end of the story. She fell asleep to the sound of Mama’s soothing voice and dreamed of witches and fairy tales. 

\-------------

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**START READING HERE**

**===================**

The doctors didn’t let her leave the hospital until three days later. Mama said it was because she hit her head and got a concussion, and she needed to be under observation for a while. Daisy wasn’t really sure what a concussion was but didn’t really care. She was really sleepy and kept falling asleep but when she woke up there was always someone there, so it was ok. Uncle Phil had to go back to work after a while, but auntie Maria came to visit and Mama never left the hospital. 

When they did leave, Mama carried her, which was silly because there was nothing wrong with Daisy’s legs (except some bruises and scrapes, but Daisy knew Mama had had lots worse and done lots more than walking), but auntie Maria said Mama was feeling overprotective at the moment, and to just go with it, so Daisy let herself be carried. She had to come back to the hospital in a few weeks to have the cast taken off, and the doctor gave Mama some painkillers for her. Auntie Maria drove the car back to the apartment, and Mama sat in the back with Daisy, even though she was six and didn’t need comforting, even if her arm did hurt a bit. Auntie Maria insisted on cooking dinner too, and Daisy thought auntie Maria was feeling overprotective too. Not that Daisy was going to complain, auntie Maria made stir-fry and brownies, and didn’t set anything on fire like Mama would have. 

Mama sent her to bed right after dinner though, which sucked because it was _two whole hours_ before her bedtime and Mama was being a meanie. She tried to get auntie Maria to help, but she just reminded her that she was grounded and Daisy decided auntie Maria was a meanie too. This sucked.

\-------------

Natasha found herself sleeping on the floor of her Pauchok’s room again that night, and the next several nights too. It had been the better part of a year since she’d done that last, and it had been a slow and difficult process getting both her and Daisy comfortable sleeping in separate rooms, but she needed it tonight. She kept seeing Daisy’s crumpled body on the ground whenever she closed her eyes, and dreams of a ransacked house and blood-stained floor had haunted her dreams the last two nights. She needed to be able to hear her Pauchok’s steady breathing, needed to hear that she was alright. She snuck out before Daisy woke in the morning, not wanting to make Daisy regress back into needing someone with her to sleep. 

She got cereal and bowls out for breakfast, noting that they needed to get more milk, and then went to wake Daisy up. For all her complaining about going to bed early, she’d fallen asleep quickly and slept deeply. Her body needed sleep to heal, which had been most of the reason for sending her to bed early. Not that she was going to tell Daisy that, she was determined to impress on her daughter the consequences of disobeying her. Daisy could have died, and while Nat was sure Daisy wasn’t going to try to flip the swing again, she wasn’t going to risk Daisy deciding to ignore her on something else. Not when Daisy could die from it.

She pushed away the insidious whisper that Daisy was already dead, that none of this was real. She tried not to think about how the whispers were getting louder, how reality didn’t quite seem to line up right anymore, how there was something wrong in her head. She was only imagining it. It was just stress, she’d be fine after spending a week at the farm after Christmas. She would. 

They didn’t do much that day. Nat wouldn’t let Daisy run around, and Daisy didn’t want to rest, so they compromised and played some board games sitting down, and then they practised reading in Mandarin and Spanish. Daisy still spoke both languages, along with English and Russian, fluently as they still used different languages on different days, but her reading had never been as good as in English or Russian, and her writing was almost gone at this point. Natasha didn’t really mind, her daughter was smart and doing well as school, and she wasn’t going to pressure her to learn more. It was something reasonably quiet to do though, so she helped Daisy through a couple chapters of a book in Spanish, and then another in Mandarin. 

Sunday passed about the same way as Saturday did, and then it was Monday and Natasha was nervously waving goodbye to Daisy before leaving her at school. Logically she knew Daisy was mostly fine. The concussion was completely gone, and her scrapes and bruises were healing up and as long as she was careful her arm would be ok. She’d spoken to Daisy’s teacher and given him a couple of painkillers to give Daisy if she needed them, and the likelihood of anything happening was astronomically low. She still felt indescribably nervous. 

She went into the Triskelion anyway and spent the day training (well, she was beating up random strike team members but it wasn’t her fault if they were dumb enough to go against her was it? And at least they came out of it with the badge of honour of having been brave enough to spar the Black Widow (although if Coulson asked she had no idea that was a thing and most definitely had never encouraged it)). She turned up early to pick up Daisy and went to chat with Jennifer was also, invariably, early. 

“Hi Natalie! Wasn’t sure if I was going to see you today, missed you on Friday.”

Nat gave a friendly smile that had stopped being Natalie Smythe’s months and months ago. Even before Jennifer had worked out that she wasn’t really a translator. It was strange having a civilian friend, but that was what Jennifer was, a friend. The other woman had never mentioned the day she’d had a panic attack, or what she’d told her afterwards, which Natasha appreciated, and the fact that Jennifer had never seemed to judge her or hate her for her past meant more than Nat could ever describe. “Yeah, Skye was in hospital; turns out recklessness runs in the family.”

“Oh! Is she alright?”

“Mostly, got a concussion and fractured her wrist but is otherwise pretty much ok. Scared me half to death though.”

“What did she do?”

“Tried to flip the swing over the bar.”

“While on it?”

“Yep.” 

Jennifer shook her head “Skye’s something else.”

“Yeah, I just wish she had more of a sense of self preservation.”

“Maybe she’ll grow into it?”

Natasha had a nasty feeling that it was unlikely, Daisy was far too much her daughter, and she hadn’t always set the best example, but she just nodded and changed the subject “Have you got any plans for the holiday?”

“We thought we’d take the kids to see the White House.” Jennifer said, allowing Nat to change the subject “It seems silly that we’ve lived here for almost a decade and never been. Have you visited?”

Nat hummed, glancing round to check they couldn’t be overheard “Well, technically I broke in, but yes.”

The stunned look of half amazement half horror on Jennifer’s face was hilarious, and Nat resisted the urge to laugh aloud. 

“You-the White-you…”

Nat took pity on her friend and shrugged “Long story, there was a terrorist group and a bomb…we dealt with it and dropped a few hints to the right people about the holes in their security. Wasn’t a big deal.”

Jennifer gaped at her some more before visibly pulling herself together “Ok, moving past all _that,_ ” she waved her hand vaguely and Nat had to bite back a grin “what’s it like?”

Nat shrugged, “It’s impressive enough as government buildings go. I prefer the old buildings in Europe though. If you ever get a chance to visit France, you should go to the Palace of Versailles, it’s beautiful.”

“I’ll bear that in mind” Jennifer said, amusement in her voice.

The gates opened a moment after that, and the conversation trailed off as they went to pick up their respective kids. Despite the fact that she knew Daisy was going to be fine, she still felt something loosen in her chest when she saw Daisy bounding over, looking completely fine apart from the cast, which seemed to have gained a couple dozen scribbles on it. On closer inspection the scribbles turned out to be signatures, and Daisy told her excitedly that it was tradition to get people to sign your cast. Nat smiled at her daughter’s enthusiasm, inwardly relieved that Daisy hadn’t lost any of her spirit. She told Daisy that she’d sign it too when they got home, and did so in three languages. 

\--------------

Daisy bounced back from getting hurt surprisingly quickly, and by the next week the cut on her forehead was a pink line, and her scrapes had all scabbed thickly over, and her bruises were fading. Nat wished her Pauchok hadn’t bounced back so quickly though, Daisy may be ready to run around again, but Nat’s nerves weren’t nearly ready. Even for Daisy though, the excited squeal, as they got home from school on Wednesday, was unusual. It became clear an instant later though, as Nat’s eyes fell on the doormat.

Nutella was sitting outside the apartment door, glaring at them as if to say ‘why haven’t you let me in yet’. This, on it’s own, wasn’t unusual as Nat refused to leave a window open or install a cat flap, because she was fully aware of the security risk that posed, so Nutella tended to just sit outside the door and mew until someone let her in. The five kittens rough-housing on the mat though were distinctly _not_ normal. Nat realised in a sudden rush of horror that she’d never gotten Nutella neutered. 

Daisy bolted forwards to pet the kittens, tucking her left arm, with its cast, close to her stomach as she crouched down. Nat had a sinking feeling that trying to get rid of the kittens was going to require more persuasive skill than convincing the most secretive terrorist to spill his secrets. Aloud she said “Maybe wait until we’re all inside to pet them Pauchok?”

Daisy didn’t stop petting them, but she did move enough for Nat to access the keyhole, which was probably the best she was going to get for the moment. She got the door open and somehow managed to get herself, Daisy, Nutella and all five kittens inside before shutting the door. Then she fetched an old towel and spread it around the bath and matter of factly collected all the kittens and deposited in them in the bath. She was not having them pee on the carpet if she could possibly help it. Some cajoling got Daisy to take her school-bag off and then Nat left Daisy to cooing over the kittens and called Clint.

Clint, thankfully, picked up on the third ring. “Hey Nat, I was about to call you! Cooper’s walking! Well sort of, he can only do it side-ways around the furniture and he’s really slow but he’s getting there and it’s so cute and he’s going to be running around in no time and…”  


“Nutella brought home babies!” Nat said, cutting Clint off before he could ramble too much because yes, Cooper starting to walk was exciting and important, but Nutella had brought home babies and Nat needed someone to tell her what to do with them!

“What?”

“Nutella. Daisy’s cat. Brought home babies.” Nat enunciated impatiently.

“What, like human ones?”

“No! Cat babies!”

There was a pause, and then “You never got Nutella neutered?”

“She was the only cat on the helicarrier!”

“You moved a year ago!”  


“It was a busy move!”

There was a pause and then Clint burst into howls of laughter. Nat called him several choice names. Why had she thought Clint would help again? 

“Shut up birdbrain and tell me what to do with them!”

“Why would I know?” Clint asked between chortles.

“You live on a farm, surely you must know something?”

Clint snorted “I can look after chicks and adult chickens and goats, you’re on your own with this one Nat.”

“You could at least stop laughing at me.” Nat complained.

“I could.” Clint agreed, snickering. “But I’m not going to.”

“I’ll tell Laura” she threatened.

“Hey! What happened to having your partner’s back?” Clint complained, although he did stop laughing.

Nat maintained a pointed silence.

“Okay, fair point.” Clint conceeded “I think Phil might have said something once about having a cat when he was a kid. He might be able to help?”

“I’ll give him a call.” Nat said, relieved “Thanks.”

“Yeah, yeah, say hi to Daisy for me will you? And tell her not to jump off any more swings.”

“I think she already learned that one, but I’ll pass it on.” She said dryly “Say hi to Laura for me.”

“Will do. Bye Nat”

“Bye”

She hung up the phone and called Phil, who turned out not to have had a cat when he was a kid but had desperately wanted one. Upon hearing that Nutella had kittens Phil informed her that he was coming over and promptly hung up, leaving Nat blinking at her phone and wondering what on earth her life had come to. 

She shook her head for a moment and slipped the phone into her pocket before heading into the bathroom to check on Daisy (and the kittens she supposed), only to find that her Pauchok had named the kittens, which probably wasn’t a good sign.

“Daisy, don’t get too attached, we can’t keep them.”

Her Pauchok looked up at her with an expression of utter betrayal “But Mama! They’re so cute!”

“You’ve already got a pet.” Nat pointed out, trying not to let the puppy dog eyes her daughter was very, very good at sway her. 

“But they’re _kittens,_ ” Daisy protested “and Nutella would be sad if you sent her babies away.”

Natasha took a deep breath. She was the black widow, she was an infamous assassin, she was not going to be swayed by a few balls of fur, puppy dog eyes, and pleading. She was _not_. Except…the kittens did look pretty young, and Nat was pretty sure animals shouldn’t be separated from their mother until a certain age, and it wasn’t giving in to say they could stay a couple of weeks was it? And it would keep Daisy out of trouble while her arm healed. One of the kittens, a tabby with black socks snuggled up to it’s mother and Nat almost, _almost_ cooed. Dammit. This is what she got for growing soft. 

“They can stay until they’re old enough to leave Nutella. But then they go to new homes.” She said, trying to emphasise the last sentence. It would be cruel to separate the kittens from Nutella too early. It wasn’t that she’d given in. Daisy smiled so wide her entire body seemed to be smiling and Nat hoped she didn’t come to regret this. There was a knock at the door and Nat turned her head to it.

“That was fast.” She said dryly. She wondered how many traffic laws Phil had broken to get there in barely ten minutes.

“Who’s that?”

“Uncle Phil, I think he wants to see the kittens.”

Daisy’s face somehow managed to light up further at the prospect of having someone else around as enthusiastic as she was, and Nat had a sinking feeling she was about to be ganged up on. She glanced through the eyehole to see Agent May standing on the mat. Phil must have dragged her along too, Nat hadn’t even known the woman was in the city. She nudged Daisy (who had started literally bouncing with excitement) out of the way and opened the door.

“Phil, you didn’t say you were bringi…” the words died on her lips as she registered three things in quick succession. 

Phil wasn’t there. 

The set of Agent May’s shoulder’s was just a hair too stiff. 

The way May’s shocked eyes fastened on her daughter.

This wasn’t Agent May.

In a split second adrenaline was surging through her body and she was moving before she had even truly comprehended the danger. She surged out the door, going on the offensive before the woman-who-was-not-Agent-May could even think about stepping forward. She heard the code word fall out of her mouth, and Daisy’s gasp of shock and fear, then the door slamming behind her. She and the woman-who-was-not-Agent-May slammed into the half-wall of the hallway with the woman underneath her, and Nat was pulling back to hit her even as the force ran through her body. The woman grunted and rolled, flipping them, but Nat kicked her off and sprang to her feet. 

“Natasha stop! I’m not a threat!”

Natasha ignored the woman and advanced quickly, throwing out vicious, brutal blows that the woman only just managed to block, retreating rapidly. Natasha’s heart pounded in her chest, keenly aware of her defenceless daughter in the apartment behind her. This woman was good. Not many people could defend against the Black Widow going full force against them. The likelihood that she was working alone was very, very low, and Natasha didn’t dare let the woman retreat too far, didn’t dare let herself be led away from the apartment door. Time, she had to buy Daisy time. Time to climb into the tiny safe-room installed in the corner kitchen cupboard. Time to call Phil. Time for help to come. 

The woman grunted as Nat landed a vicious blow to her rubs, and for the first time she hit back, a precise blow aimed at her stomach, designed to hold her off. Natasha grabbed hold of it and pulled, driving her other fist towards towards her stomach, but the woman was already twisting, flipping over Nat’s shoulder and lashing at her legs. Nat jumped over it without hesitation, not giving an inch.

“Stop this Natasha! You need to listen to me!”

Natasha ignored that too. This woman, whoever she was, had made a serious mistake as soon as she’d threatened Daisy. Never, never get between a mother and her young, especially not between the Black Widow and her daughter. She went on the offensive again, driving the woman backwards, back towards the apartment door. The woman was fighting back properly now, unable to stay on her feet staying merely on the defensive. Her fighting style was eerily similar to the real Agent May’s, but Natasha had sparred May before, and she could see the difference. The blows that were a second too fast, a hair too sharp, with a hard edge to her movements that the real Agent May didn’t have, and none of the bantering attitude that May brought to sparring. 

“Nat! I don’t want to hurt you.”  


“Worry about yourself.”

They reached the apartment door again, and Nat drove the woman past it, and down the hall away from the direction the woman had been leading her. The woman who wasn’t May didn’t react, remaining mostly on the defensive as she fell back. Nat chose her moment and aimed a particularly vicious kick at the woman’s ribs, just as she reached the patch of uneven floor that Nat knew was there but the woman didn’t. She stumbled, just for a second, but it was enough. Her kick connected with vicious force and the woman went down hard. Nat was on her in a split second, and they scuffled on the floor, but they both knew Nat had won the moment her kick connected. Nat’s fingers found the handle of the knife holstered on her leg and she pulled it out, pressing it against the woman’s throat. She stilled instantly. 

“Who are you?” she demanded “How many others are there?”

The woman’s eyes had widened slightly, an edge of fear in them that wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy Nat. She should be terrified. Any other woman would be terrified if the Black Widow held a knife to her throat. 

“Melinda May, it’s just me. Let me explain.”

Nat slid the blade sideways slightly and pressed, drawing blood. 

“You’re not Melinda May. You’re good, but you’re not quite right. Tell the truth or I’ll cut your throat and let you choke on your own blood.”

The woman’s expression shifted, her blank mask cracking under an incredulous ‘You’ve got to be kidding me’ expression. “I am May! Let me up and we can talk about this rationally!”

Nat pressed the blade harder, “Last chance, choose your words carefully.”

Desperation swept over the woman’s face. “This world isn’t real.”

Dimly, Natasha registered the woman was still speaking, but the words couldn’t reach her over the roaring in her ears. 

“No.” she gasped “ _ **No!**_ ”

She was lying. She’d come to take Daisy, she’d come to hurt Daisy, she was lying, she had to be. 

But she wasn’t.

She couldn’t be.

Natasha had never told _anyone_ , not even Clint, about the whispers. She’d never told anyone about deja-vu or knowing what would happen before it did. She’d never told anyone how the dream, the nightmare, the _memory_ , of Hunan had felt _real_ in a way nothing else had. 

There was only one way May could know what Natasha, in the darkest depths of her soul, had feared. If it was true. And that meant this wasn’t real. Which meant Hunan was.

Daisy was dead.

Natasha broke. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary of skipped bit: Daisy tries to flip the swing in the park, falls off and gives herself a concussion, a cut on the head, a fractured arm and a lot of bruises and scrapes. 
> 
> Reality has broken into the Framework!!! This is post-Bahrain May (as opposed to the pre-Bahrain May that Nat knows in the Framework, who isn't as hardened). Only a few more chapters of this to go until the end :-( 
> 
> Comments make me happy :-)


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth, both the wonderful and the awful, comes out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is twice the length of my usual chapters, but I don't want to break it up. It's over 9000 words of feels and angst and fluff!
> 
> Bits of this chapter, especially the implied bits won't make much sense if you haven't watched Agents of Shield. Sorry about that, I hope you enjoy it anyway. And, for once, there is no trigger warning for this chapter!!!

Dimly Nat registered that she’d released the woman. She registered that the knife wasn’t in her hand anymore. She registered that she was on the ground but the woman was sitting up. She registered that doors were opening down the hall as neighbours emerged to investigate the commotion. She registered the sound of metal against tile as her knife was kicked out of sight.

It didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered.

Daisy was dead.

Hands grabbed her shoulders and shook hard, and through the rushing in her ears she made out worried, impossible words. Important words. Impossible words.

“She’s not dead Natasha! Daisy is _not_ dead. Calm down! _Natasha_!”

“W-what?” Natasha asked, and she couldn’t even bring herself to care about the crack in her voice. How could she say Daisy wasn’t dead. Natasha had been to Hunan. Sometime, in some world, Natasha had been to Hunan and seen the truth. Daisy was dead. Her Pauchok was gone. Everything was a lie. Daisy was **dead**.

“She’s fine, she’s just had a bit of a shock, I’m taking her inside.” May said, and the words weren’t directed at her but she let herself nod along to them. She let May pull her to her feet, let May guide her towards the door and turn the knob. The door didn’t open.

“It’s locked.” Nat said, the words a numb statement of fact.

“Do you have the key?”

“It’s inside.”

“Will Daisy open the door if I knock?”

“Daisy’s dead.”

Huh, the words sounded even worse aloud than they did in her head.

“Natasha she’s not dead, she’s… _Natasha!_ Don’t you _dare_ go into shock!”

Shock, yes, she probably was going into that. She tried to pull herself together. Tried to deal with the immediate problem. She could do that. Deal with the immediate problem then deal with the problem after that and the one after that. Just treat it like any other mission. Deal with the problem, don’t die. She’d done this a hundred times before. She just had to keep moving. Keep moving so she didn’t die. Keep moving so she could make everything else wait. Keep moving.

“If this isn’t real, why can’t we just imagine the door opening?” she asked.

May huffed but sounded relived that she actually said something intelligent “Because this isn’t a dream, it’s much more elaborate than that.”

Natasha turned this over in her head, and found another, more important, question. “Are you from the Red Room? Or the KGB?”

“No. I’m Shield.”

“So Shield is real then? Assuming you’re not lying to me.”

“It is, and I’m not. Although it looks rather different now than it used to.”

“Now?”

“What year is it? For you?”

“1994”

“This place is about two decades behind.”

Nat thought about that for a moment then shoved that piece of information into the ‘deal with later’ pile. Along with the fact that her baby girl was dead. She took a careful breath in, held it for a second and then released it. Just like any other mission, just like any other interrogation. “If this isn’t a dream, what is this place?” she asked.

May gave her a look like she knew exactly what Nat was doing but answered the question. “It’s called the Framework. It’s a virtual reality designed to be used for training, but it went wrong. You and Daisy went in to test it, but one of the scientists decided to try something off the books while you two were inside.” May stopped speaking abruptly, anger visible in every line of her body.

“A virtual reality.” Nat said hollowly, it sounded ridiculous, but every piece of the woman-who-might-be-May’s body language said it was true “You put my six year old daughter in a virtual reality.”

May blinked at her “This place is two decades behind.” She repeated.

It took a moment for that to properly sink in. Daisy hadn’t been born two decades early. She’d gone back in time to when Daisy was younger. In a virtual reality. Assuming this woman wasn’t lying. Although if she was, she was a very, very good liar if Nat couldn’t find even a hint of a lie in her body language. “Daisy’s twenty six?!?”

“A little bit older, but yes, she’s an adult.”

Nat abruptly remembered May’s look of shock when she’d seen Daisy. “How?” she breathed.

“It’s been twenty years, technology developed rapidly, and we have some very good scientists and…”

“No.” Nat cut her off, “How is Daisy alive? She died. She died in Hunan.” Her voice was quiet, her chest tight with the words, with the memory. With the knowledge and the certainty of a ransacked house and a bloodstained floor.

“You remember Hunan?!” May asked.

Nat nodded, the movement jerky and utterly inadequate to describe the way Hunan _haunted_ her dreams.

“What do you remember happening in Hunan?” May asked.

Nat shook her head “That’s not how this works. You give me answers.”

May glared at her but seemed to see something in her face because she backed down. “Whatever you remember, it’s probably only part of the truth. You took Daisy to Hunan, to her father, when she was a baby. I think you said she was about three months old. You left her there to protect her and returned to the KGB without ever telling anyone. Years later you returned to find a ghost village and concluded that Daisy was dead. Clint says you went off the rails afterwards, drank too much and kept taking suicide missions until he started tagging along on them. But Daisy didn’t actually die there. There was a shield mission there to retrieve an 084, they found the place abandoned, everyone dead except for this one kid, a baby girl. She was the 084. They brought her back to America, and when the team started getting crossed off, they put her into the system with a hidden protocol to move her around frequently to keep her safe. She grew up to join shield, called herself Skye…”

Natasha couldn’t help her gasp, could help remembering how something about that choice of name had sent chills down her spine, couldn’t help the hope that sparked like a wildfire in her chest. May sent her a curious look, and paused for a split second before she continued.

“…until a whole lot of stuff happened and we found out who she was and she decided to call herself Daisy again. You realised she was alive when you and Clint came to visit our new base and she walked into the office. You freaked out a bit, you’d thought she was dead for years and years and I think it took a while for you to absorb that she was alive. I expect that’s the reason you remember Hunan. You thought she was dead for years, that kind of trauma never really leaves you.” There was a twist to May’s voice like she knew this first hand, but Nat was too busy thinking over all the information May had just given her, too busy trying not to give in to the hope swelling in her chest. If what May was saying was true…

Daisy was alive. Daisy was _alive_.

“Prove it.” Natasha said, because she was the Black Widow and she’d been lied to too often to trust a story that seemed far too good to be true.

May looked at her “I don’t have physical proof. They could only send my mind into the Framework.”

She didn’t suggest that Natasha would just have to trust her, they both knew Nat wouldn’t. So she went for the next best thing, and started interrogating the woman-who-was-probably-May.

“Who is Daisy’s father?” she asked.

The woman didn’t hesitate “An inhuman named Jia Ying. He uses other peoples’ life force to extend his life.”

Natasha didn’t know that, but she didn’t let that fact show on her face “And his friend?”

“You mean Gordon? Another inhuman, he could teleport, generally with a lot of blue light.”

Natasha didn’t let anything show on her face, but hope burned in her chest. But Maria could have told Phil that, and Phil could have told May. “Where was Daisy born?”

Slight hesitation “A safe-house somewhere, I don’t remember where you said. I do remember that you said you killed someone there only an hour or so before she was born.”

Natasha hummed ambiguously “Why did I take her to Hunan to meet her father?”

“Daisy almost got shot by someone trying to kill you, you decided you had to leave her behind to keep her safe so you took her to her father in Hunan.”

“When I went back to Hunan, what did I bring back with me?”

“Here? I don’t know. In the real world you took a photo, one of you holding Daisy and looking down at her. You carried it with you on missions for years.”

Natasha allowed herself to swallow, allowed herself to show that tiny bit of information. There weren’t many other questions she could ask, but she didn’t need to. May was telling the truth. Daisy was alive. Daisy was ok. Well, aside from apparently being stuck in a virtual reality with her. Daisy was _**alive**_.

She wanted to collapse to her knees and sob with relief, but she couldn’t. Her daughter may be alive but there was still clearly something hugely wrong. She was still in a virtual reality with her daughter and May. She needed to keep moving. Needed to sort this out.

“Is Phil real?”

“In the real world? Yes. Here? No.”

Natasha nodded sharply and pulled out her phone, keying in Phil’s number from memory. It picked up on the first ring, Phil’s mission calm voice coming through instantly, his voice tinged with a panic he couldn’t quite hide. “Romanoff?”

“Yeah, it’s me” she said, trying to make her voice sound as normal as she could, knowing he would be listening for anything slightly scared in her tone. “Listen, it was a false alarm, I thought there was a danger and decided to play it safe, but it’s ok, the neighbour directly upstairs’s son came back from the army, and he got the floor wrong. I’m locked out though, can you call Daisy back and keep her calm while I get the spare key? Tell her what’s going on.”

Phil’s voice was cautious when he answered “Of course, is it ok if I offer to take her out for ice-cream later?”

Nat almost smiled at the careful opening Phil had left her to use, or notably not use, their signal word “Pineapple Phil, I’m not being threatened, everything’s fine.”

Phil let out a breath of relief “I’m still coming over if that’s ok? Just in case.”

Nat weighed this up for a second “Ok, why don’t you get ice-cream on the way then, I don’t think you should stay too long though, I’d rather get things back to normal for Daisy, maybe an early night. She’s had a scare.”

“Ok, I’ll call her now.”

“Thanks” Nat said, lowering the phone and hanging up.

“You want me to make myself scarce?” May asked.

Nat nodded “Unless you want to explain to Phil that he’s not real.”

“I think I’ll pass.” May said dryly.

Nat snorted, surprising herself a little with the humour. She felt like she’d just come out of three back to back missions, wrung out and exhausted, physically, mentally and emotionally.

Aloud she said “There’s a spare key in the car. You can tell me more while we walk and then go to a café or something.”

“Good, I think your neighbours are getting a little suspicious.”

“Are my neighbours’ real people?” Nat asked curiously. Just how many people weren’t actually real?

“No, but I don’t think that matters in the Framework.”

Nat swallowed hard “Is Clint real?”

May shot her a look, and Nat knew the answer even before May shook her head, “He’s waiting for you both in the real world”

Nat thought, for a moment, of asking more questions, of trying to work out if there were any differences between her Clint and the real Clint, but her chest felt tight and she didn’t think she could deal with that. “Who is real?” she asked, even though she didn’t think she really wanted to know the answer.

“Us and Daisy.” May said, and the answer was so much worse than she’d imagined.

That was everyone she knew, everyone but Daisy. Presumably May herself had only just started to be real. Nat wondered if there was a virtual May wandering around somewhere or if May had taken over her virtual self’s body. The thought made her brain hurt.

“How do we get out of here?” she asked, distracting herself because she didn’t think she could deal with the thought that everyone she knew wasn’t real. That Clint, Phil, Maria, Fury, Jennifer, everyone she loved, everyone she had built a life with, weren’t real. That none of this had ever been real.

“There’s an exit, some kind of code that creates an exit in a geographical spot in the virtual world. It’s in Hunan.”

Nat skidded to a stop and gaped at the other agent “You put it in _Hunan_?” she asked incredulously.

“If we’d known before they sent me in where you were we’d have put it here. Hunan is the last place we knew you we. Fitz managed to track your code that far before it got lost completely.”

Natasha decided not to dignify that with an answer, just started moving towards where she’d parked the car again. She reached the car and opened up the engine. May snorted from the side “Of course you put the key in the engine rather than the glove compartment.”

Nat didn’t dignify that with a response either. Of course she wasn’t going to leave the spare key somewhere as obvious as the _glove compartment_. She reached a hand under part of the engine and carefully extracted the small box taped there with masking tape. She wiped her hand reasonably clean on her jeans, then scanned her ring finger and waited for the small pop that indicated the box was unlocked and headed back towards the stairs.

Two minutes later she was scanning her hand and inputting the code to open the safebox, and helping Daisy out of it, her chest tight with relief. Daisy, aside from being seriously shaken, did not seem to have taken any harm from the trip. The kitten she’d brought in with her had peed in the box though. Nat raised a stern eyebrow at her daughter.

“I was already holding her when you said!” Daisy said defensively.

Nat gave a startled laugh “OK, I’m not mad at you, you climbed in and hid when you should have Pauchok, I’m so, so proud of you.”

“Uncle Phil said there wasn’t really a baddie though, so I could have not hid.” Daisy pointed out.

“I know, I’m sorry I scared you, but I’m glad you hid anyway.”

“Why Mama?”

Nat brushed Daisy’s hair off her forehead “Because it shows me that if the day comes when there is a threat, I can trust you to hide and keep yourself safe.” Even if it turned out her little Pauchok was actually an adult, and none of this was real. Natasha hadn’t nearly wrapped her mind around that yet. Could either of them even die in this place?

“Mama?” Daisy asked, snapping her attention back to the present, or whatever this was, “Can I go change clothes?”

Nat realised abruptly that the box hadn’t been the only thing the kitten had peed on. “Yes, that would probably be best. I’ll put the kitten in the bath with the others.”

“Can I play with them after I’m changed?”

“Sure Pauchok.”

Daisy gave a delighted grin and ran off to change, and Nat watched her go, her heart heavy. It was impossible to wrap her mind around but her carefree daughter was really an adult Shield agent. An adult Shield agent who had, according to May, grown up in the system. Without Natasha. Her heart ached at the thought that, in reality, she hadn’t gotten to raise her Pauchok. What kind of life had her little girl had in the system? Did Daisy had pets when she grew up in the real world? Had she had parents who loved her? Had she gone to school and joined clubs and gone to birthday parties? What kind of life had lead her daughter into Shield? And what kind of Shield agent was she? Natasha took a moment to wish deeply that her daughter was the kind of Shield agent that never went within a hundred miles of the field, and who screamed and ran the other way when a gun was pulled, rather than running towards the bullets.  
  


She knew they had to get out of this virtual reality. She didn’t need to be a scientist to be able to think of all kinds of risks, and she wouldn’t risk her Pauchok’s life to stay in this place, no matter how hard whatever truth awaited in the real world was. But something inside of her cried at the thought.

The sudden sound of someone knocking on the door made her draw her breath in sharply, and she took a moment to just breathe. To pull on a mask and pretend everything was normal. She tried not to think about how wrong it felt to be pulling on a mask to talk to her handler, or how much that single action really said about how not ok Natasha was.

\---------------

Daisy had only been in bed for ten minutes when May knocked on the door again. She was still going to bed early, which Natasha was thankful for. She still wasn’t sure she trusted this harder version of May. Whatever happened in the real world, it had hardened the agent she knew. She wasn’t sure she was ready to deal with her interacting with Daisy.

She gave May some food, and they both sat at the table in silence as she ate. When May finished and set the bowl aside Nat took a deep breath in and finally asked “What now?”

Whatever else time or reality had changed in May, one thing was certainly the same, she didn’t mince her words. “You and Daisy can’t stay here. We’ve done our best, but your bodies are beginning to waste away, and this place isn’t safe. If something goes wrong with the program, or if the power goes out on base, anyone whose minds are still in here will die. And even if nothing outside the Framework goes wrong, if you die here you will go brain dead in the real world.”

Natasha hadn’t expected good news, but that was still pretty bad “How long have we got?”

“The sooner you get out the better, but if nothing goes wrong, it’ll be several more months before your bodies start wasting away dangerously.”

“That’s a big if.”

May nodded.

“So how do we get out?”

“Fitz managed to code in an exit, all we need to do is walk through it.”

“And the exit’s in Hunan.”

Another nod.

Nat tried to gather her thoughts, tried to be rational. Daisy had school tomorrow, but if this wasn’t real, if Daisy was really an adult, then that didn’t really matter did it?”

“How did you get here?”

“Here as in the Framework or here as in Washington?”

“Washington.”

“Took a few days leave and caught a plane coming to the Triskelion, told the pilot I was going to see family in the city.”

The easy way the woman said it suggested to Nat that she wasn’t entirely lying. She wondered what her relationship with May was in the real world, what Daisy’s relationship with her was. Here they were tentative friends and respectful rivals, and she was a sporadic but not important figure in Daisy’s life. Something about the way May spoke, and the anger she’d shown earlier when talking about the scientist who’d decided to mess around with the Framework, told her this wasn’t true of the real world.

“There isn’t likely to be a plane conveniently going to Hunan.”

“No, but I could get a plane, if this world isn’t too different from the real one twenty years ago, then Phil owes me a favour. He can get us the plane, or we can fly commercial.”

Nat thought it over, weighing up the pros and cons “Get a quinjet from Phil, if we fly commercial it’ll ping in Shield, and Phil and Maria and Fury will all ask questions if I fly out to Hunan of all places with Daisy on a school day.”

“You should call Daisy in sick then, so the school isn’t looking for Daisy either.”

Nat nodded “Get the plane, I’ll deal with the school. You can sleep on the couch tonight. It’s comfortable.”

May nodded “You going to tell her?”

Nat didn’t even bother pretending not to know what May was referring to. “She’s six.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Nat swallowed. How could she explain to her daughter that everything she knew but her mother wasn’t real? How could she explain that everything was about to change and it would never be the same again? But Daisy, Daisy trusted her, and she’d decided years ago that she wouldn’t lie to Daisy, not if she could help it.

“I have to.”

May seemed to understand what Nat wasn’t saying “I could tell her.”

Nat shook her head “She’s my daughter.”

May’s eyes narrowed “She’s my daughter too.”

The words hit Nat almost like a physical blow, and she let her eyes widen in shock. But the truth of them shone in May’s eyes.

“You adopted her?”

“She adopted us.” May said, but Nat didn’t need to be a spy to tell that it hadn’t been, wasn’t, a one way street.

Nat swallowed, “Here, I’m her Mama, it should be me.”

“Okay.”

Nat nodded, and then turned abruptly and went into the study to escape May, unable to even begin to sort out the tangle of emotions in her chest. She didn’t emerge until she heard May finish talking to Phil over the phone and settle on the couch, and then she went to brush her teeth and then into Daisy’s room. If this was going to be the last night she got to have with her daughter as a child, she was going to spend it close to her Pauchok.

\--------------

Natasha slept fitfully, and woke up in the middle of the night to Daisy curling into her side on the floor.

“I couldn’t sleep.” Daisy murmured tiredly, and Nat carefully picked Daisy up and put her under the covers on the bed, then climbed in after her.

“Just for tonight sweetheart.” she whispered back. There wouldn’t be any more nights after this. Not in the same way.

Morning came far too early, the sun trickling around the edges of the curtains and waking her up as soon as it hit her eyes. She yawned, and sleepily extracted herself from the bed without waking her Pauchok and went to get dressed. She felt a ridiculous urge to pack, even though they couldn’t bring anything with them, and stood still for a moment in her bedroom, paralysed with the knowledge that she was about to leave and never return. This had been the first apartment she’d ever properly lived in. The first place she’d decorated and installed the furniture and made her own, hers and Daisy’s. Except it probably wasn’t really her first, and she had doubtless had another first apartment somewhere else. There was no point in feeling attached to something that wasn’t even real. Even if it had felt real. Even if it had been hers. This is what she got for growing soft, for getting attached.

She tried not to think about it as she pulled on some clothes, and then found some that would fit May. The woman was still doing Tai-Chi in the living room when Nat came out, and she dropped the bundle of clothes on the couch. May’s eyes flickered over to her for a moment but she didn’t say anything and neither did Nat. She slipped back into Daisy’s room knowing Daisy would be waking up any moment.

Daisy was already awake, sitting up in bed and blinking sleepily. Nat sat on the edge of the bed and held her arms out for a hug which Daisy immediately wriggled over for. Nat savoured the feel of her daughter’s small body in her arms, resting her cheek against her tangled curls and wishing they could stay there forever.

“Mama?”

“Hmmm?”

“Don’t I havta get ready for school?”

Nat took a deep breath “You’re not going to school today sweetheart.”

Daisy’s head snapped up “ _Really? I get to stay home with the kittens?_ ”

The kittens. Nat had actually forgotten about them. “Um, no sweetheart, sorry. We’re, um, we’re going to go on a trip.”

“Why?”

Nat swallowed hard “Can I tell you a story Daisy?”

Daisy nodded enthusiastically, and Nat let a smile tug at the corner of her mouth. She wriggled further onto the bed to lean against the wall, and let Daisy climb into her lap.

“Once upon a time” she started, because honestly, where else was she going to start? “There was a baby who was born to a spy, and the spy left her with her father to keep her safe.” She tried to remember what May had told her about Daisy in the real world but couldn’t remember any details. Maybe May hadn’t given any. “But her father was attacked, and the baby was taken away, to be looked after by other people. But the baby grew up, and became an adult, and she joined Shield.”

Daisy looked a little confused, clearly not sure why she was being told this, but she perked up at the mention of Shield “Is this a real agent?” she asked hopefully.

“Yes Pauchok, she’s a real agent.”

Daisy beamed, clearly thrilled to hear about a real Shield agent “What happened to her?”

“Well, one day, she met her mother, who was also a Shield agent, and they were reunited.”

“Were they happy?”

“I think so.” Nat said, because May hadn’t said, and she had no idea what had happened in the real world. Presumably if she and Daisy had gone into the Framework together then they got on well. She hoped so anyway. Nat thought it might break her if her Pauchok hated her.

“Don’t you know?”

“Not really, umm, I wasn’t told very much.”

“Oh, what happened after that?”

“One day the agent went into a virtual reality, called the Framework, with her Mama, but something went wrong, and they both forgot about the real world, and they thought the virtual reality was real.”

  
“What’s a virtual reality Mama?”

This. “It’s a little like a make believe world sweetheart.”

“But the agents didn’t know it was make believe?” Daisy checked.

“Exactly” Natasha said, taking a moment to be relieved her daughter was so clever.

“How did they get out?”

“Well, Shield sent another agent into the virtual reality to tell them it wasn’t real. They sent Melinda May.”

“Auntie May?”

“Yeah Pauchok, they sent auntie May.”

“What happened then?”

“May told the older agent, the mother, and umm, the mother told her daughter.”

“And then what?”

“That’s up to us Daisy.”

Daisy scrunched up her face in confusion, and Nat took a deep breath.

“Daisy, the agent in the story, that agent was you. And her mother, that’s me. We’re the agents in the virtual reality.”

“I don’t understand.” Daisy said, her voice small.

“Daisy,” Nat said, trying to make her voice as gentle as she could “what we see around us, the people we know, they aren’t real. I think they exist in the real world, but not quite the same. We’re the agents who are stuck in make believe world, and we need to get out.”

“Like a mission?” Daisy asked, still looking confused but perking up a little.

“Yeah, like a mission.” Nat said, and Daisy’s whole face lit up.

“I get to be part of a _real actual mission???_ ” Nat thought for a moment of trying to go back, to explain again that this world wasn’t real, and explain it until Daisy really understood, because it was clear her daughter didn’t. But she had explained the best she could, and she didn’t think she could get Daisy to understand any better, so she nodded.

Daisy gave a squeal of excitement and jumped off the bed, bouncing up and down and up and down in the middle of the floor like she simply could not contain her excitement. “What do we have to do? Do we get to go somewhere? Can I have a gun?”

“Yes, we get to go somewhere, and when we get there Agent May will tell us what to do. No, you may not have a gun.”

Daisy wilted the tiniest bit “Awwww, but Mama?”

“No, and that’s final.” Nat said firmly. An adult or not in reality, there was _no way_ Nat was letting her six year old have a gun. “But you can help get ready.”

Daisy perked up to full-blown excitement again, and Nat had the feeling it was going to be a long day. Before her daughter could go through the ceiling with excitement (which Nat wouldn’t put past her daughter to manage at this point), she said “First you need to pick some clothes to wear, and then come and have breakfast. I’ll make kasha ok?”

Daisy nodded vigorously and half dived into her cupboard to find something to wear. Nat wasn’t a hundred cent sure she was going to come out wearing something even vaguely sensible but left her to it. She emerged from Daisy’s room to find that May had decided to make breakfast and was currently flipping pancakes and frying eggs. She felt mildly irritated looking at her, but didn’t say anything, just getting plates out of the cupboard. May looked at her with the tiniest smirk at the corner of her mouth but didn’t say anything either. She indicated the plate with an already made pile of pancakes on it, and Nat plated up some onto three plates, and left them for May to add the eggs to.

Daisy’s door opened and the girl literally bounced out, dressed in black jeans, a black tee-shirt, black jumper, black socks, and black sunglasses. She’d even done her best to colour in her blue cast with a black marker. Nat barely managed to hold back her laugh.

“I don’t have a black bag.” Daisy said, completely seriously.

“That’s ok, I do.” Nat said, managing to keep her voice even. She glanced across at May to find the woman staring at Daisy with a look at fondness and hunger. Her eyes drinking her Pauchok in. Nat wondered when exactly May had adopted Daisy. Had May known Daisy when she was really six years old?

“The eggs are burning” she observed dryly, and May started and turned back to the pan, quickly moving to serve them even as Daisy’s eyes fastened on her.

“Auntie May!!”

Even Nat couldn’t decipher the look on May’s face at that, but the woman just finished serving the eggs and then accepted the hug Daisy ran up to give.

“Hey there” May said, her voice gentler than Nat had ever heard it. “I hope you like pancakes.”

“You made pancakes?”

“I did.”

“Yayyy, Mama can we have maple syrup?”

Nat internally winced at the thought of giving Daisy sugar, and by extension, more energy.”

“We can.” she said, because Daisy may not really understand it, but it was her last day as a child. “But I’m putting it on.” She stipulated, because she’d like to still be sane when they got out of whatever this place was.

Daisy thought about this for a moment, knowing Nat wouldn’t put as much on as she wanted, but clearly came to the conclusion that it was the best she was going to get and nodded her understanding. Nat dug the syrup out of the cupboard and drizzled some on two of the plates before offering it to May, who shook her head. Nat shrugged and left the bottle on the counter and they took the plates to the table.

“So, what’s the plan?” Nat asked May.

May looked pointedly at Daisy and raised an eyebrow in question.

“I told her.”

“Phil’s letting me have a plane, and has agreed not to ask questions. He doesn’t know you’re coming though, so you’ll need to get in without getting caught.”

“We can manage that can’t we Daisy?”

Daisy sat up straight “I’m not Daisy,” she decided “I’m Agent Romanoff.”

May flinched. It was small, but Nat saw it, and her eyes darted across at the other agent and saw her eyes full of hurt. An instant later it was wiped away, but Nat felt her stomach twist. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Daisy wasn’t called Romanoff in her world, in the real world. She felt like she’d swallowed several rocks at the thought. If May was Daisy’s mother in the real world, where did that leave Nat?

Aloud she just said “Well then Agent Romanoff, do you think we can sneak into the Triskelion?”

Daisy nodded vigorously “I’m the best at sneaking, grandpa Fury said so.”

May made a choked noise and then a startled laugh escaped from her and Nat barely stopped herself from staring. She didn’t think she’d ever heard May laugh. Snort or snicker maybe, laugh, no.

“Grandpa Fury?”

“Uh-huh. He used to let me play agent when he was looking after me. He taught me how to sneak an’ code an’ all sorts of things. ‘Cept when I was four he taught me to pick pockets and told me not to tell Mama and when Mama found out she got mad an’ uncle Clint an’ Mama an’ I pranked him for weeks.”

“Pick pockets?” May said, looking a little incredulous.

“Eat your breakfast Pauchok.” Nat reminded her daughter, before commenting to May “You think that’s bad? Clint taught her to pick locks when she was _three_.”

May snorted “Of course he did.”

Daisy giggled into her food “Uncle Clint an’ Mama play the best pranks. Uncle Phil says Clint was never as bad before he had a partner in crime, but I don’t think he was really mad about it. I used ta help them pranks lots but then we moved from the Helicarrier an’ Clint moved away so now we don’t prank anymore.”

“The Helicarrier?” May asked.

For a moment Daisy’s eyebrows scrunched in confusion, but then she visibly abandoned the conversation in favour of her pancakes, so Nat answered “We lived on the Helicarrier until about a year ago.”

May nodded, but didn’t say anything back, and they finished breakfast in silence, May’s eyes rarely leaving Daisy. Nat swallowed hard and tried not to think about the fact that she might be about to lose her daughter.

\----------------

May left to go to the Triskelion after breakfast, and Nat abandoned the washing up (there wasn’t much point to doing it was there?) in favour of finding a black bag (to make Daisy happy) and stuffing it with snacks, cards and her laptop with a few movies on it (because Nat wasn’t dumb enough to go on a long plane ride with a six year old without food and something to do). Daisy added a flashlight, her lock-picks (Nat got them out of the safe for her), and Teddy which was really a cat. Nat filled Nutella’s food bowl because the cat mewed at her and it didn’t do any harm and strapped her favourite knives and guns to her body, just in case something went wrong. After a moments consideration she left her phone on her desk. Part of her longed to take it so she could make one last phone call to Clint, but another part of her couldn’t bear to think about it. If she was lucky, Clint would be waiting for her in reality. If he wasn’t, well, no last phone call was going to make that better.

She talked the plan over with Daisy and got her daughter to recite it back to her three times, and then shouldered the bag and lead her daughter out of their apartment for the last time. She’d already called the school and told them Daisy was sick, and there was nothing else they needed to do. She took her Pauchok’s good hand and lead her away from the apartment, and she didn’t look back, because the Black Widow did not look back, and Natasha refused to admit she wanted to.

The drive was quiet, her daughter seeming to start to understand that this was serious, and she needed to play her role perfectly. Sneaking Daisy onto the base wasn’t going to be easy. She’d done this before with Clint, but Daisy wasn’t Clint, and she would be unrealistic to expect her to manage the combination of running, timing and EMP pulse that Clint had managed. Nor could she just tell Daisy to lie down and cover her with a blanket because all the cars got scanned as they went in and even Nat would find it hard to explain a child’s skeleton in the back of her car. Instead she stalled the car just before the entrance, started it again, then stalled three more times until one of the agents at the gatehouse came out and irritably told her to get out. Nat pretended to be highly embarrassed and grateful and got out and let him drive, while she headed into the gatehouse to prattle about how she was usually such a good driver and she didn’t know what had happened and subtly flirt and completely distract them from watching the screens which she’d just plugged a USB drive, with a virus on it, into, creating a five second blip in the scan. She then jogged after the car until the agent parked it and she acted all grateful again and went back to ‘get her purse’ while the agent headed back to his post. The idiot.

Relieved that the first stage of the plan had gone fine (Natasha had only been 80% sure it would work, which was an appallingly low percentage but the best she could manage with an untrained six-year-old. It had heavily depended on the idiocy of the agents at the gates. Luckily, gate-guard agents were generally either on punishment duty or not that good, because the good agents tended to be sent on distinctly riskier assignments.). Nat helped Daisy out of the car and onto her back and threw a thick coat (reasonable given the time of year) over them both, and a few other bits and pieces, to turn herself and Daisy into a rather heavily built agent from administration. From there, getting into the building, packing the disguise away in another bag (which Nat would push ahead of her along with the snacks and stuff bag) and climbing into the vents was easy. Daisy, despite not having done any vent climbing for over a year and being slowed down by having one wrist in a cast, hadn’t forgotten her skills, and wriggled after Nat quietly and efficiently, and half an hour later they were donning the disguise again and heading to the quinjet May had told them to go to.

As planned, May was already in the quinjet when they arrived, running pre-flight checks. Nat walked confidently onto the plane (at least 70% of undercover and sneaking around was presenting the right amount of confidence) and closed the ramp behind them, before taking off the ridiculously warm coat and crouching so that Daisy could slide off her back. Her Pauchok’s face was still bright with excitement, now with added glee (presumably from the fact that they’d just successfully broken in), but she didn’t speak, instead signing “ _That was so cool Mama!!_ ”.

Nat smiled back at her daughter, for a moment caught up in her childish enthusiasm. For a moment she and Daisy grinned at each other like this was all just another prank, like they were still sneaking around the Helicarrier with something or another to prank unsuspecting (well, sometimes, they’d started getting more wary by the time Strike Team Delta were a couple of years old) agents. Then Nat remembered what they were really doing, and she felt her smile fade a little. Still she signed back “ _Good job for being so quiet Agent Romanoff._ ”

If possible Daisy’s face lit up further, but she still didn’t speak aloud, conscious that they were still not supposed to be there and there could be lines open to air-traffic control. She stowed the two bags away quickly and then helped Daisy onto one of the seats and strapped her in, double checking the security of the straps. Only then did she head towards the plane controls, leaving the cockpit door fastened open so she could still see Daisy, and raise a questioning eyebrow at May.

The woman nodded, maintaining the silence, and Nat went back out of the cockpit and strapped herself in beside Daisy as May requested permission to take-off. There was no going back now. Nat wasn’t sure if that thought made her feel relieved or trapped.

\--------------

In a normal (commercial) plane, it would take about 13 hours to get from Washington DC to Hunan province in China. In a quinjet, that was cut down to about 7 hours, but that was still a long time for a six-year-old. Nat and Daisy maintained their silence until they were 10 miles out of the Triskelion, and all lines with Shield had closed. Nat didn’t know how May had gotten Phil to agree to get her a quinjet to take to somewhere unspecified while going dark, but she was grateful. She didn’t think she could handle trying to explain to her colleges that they weren’t real…or dealing with the subsequent manhunt for ‘Agents in urgent need of medical care’ that would doubtlessly follow.

Once they had reached cruising height and levelled off, and all lines of communication were locked closed, Nat and Daisy unstrapped and Nat let her daughter go to the cockpit with her, not needing her Pauchok to say a word to know she wanted to. May looked over at them as they climbed into the co-pilot’s seat (Daisy on her lap), and her face softened into a May smile, fondness in the agent’s eyes. It occurred to Nat that no matter what kind of relationship she had with Daisy in reality, that whatever awaited them outside this world, her daughter had a mother who loved her. It was the most bittersweet thought she’d ever had.

She swallowed past the lump in her throat and offered to teach Daisy what all the switches and dials meant (providing Daisy solemnly swear she would _not_ try flying herself). Her Pauchok, obviously, did want her to teach her how to (theoretically), fly a plane, and Nat spent the next hour explaining what all the various dials and knobs did and answering the stream of questions that came from every explanation. May chipped in occasionally, but mostly stayed silent, keeping her eyes on the clear sky in front of them. Eventually though Daisy ran out of questions, and more importantly, ran out of the ability to sit still, and Nat walked with her up and down the small space of the plane, playing eye-spy, a game which lasted for barely fifteen minutes before Daisy grew bored of that too. Nat inwardly sighed (at least it didn’t really matter anymore, Daisy was a Shield agent, there was no point discouraging her from it) and fell back on the agent game, and gave Daisy a refresher course on Morse code, and then taught her a few codes to use with it. They managed to pass another hour by sending codes to May across the plane and translating the ones she sent back.

By this point Natasha was tired from entertaining and keeping up with Daisy, but her Pauchok was showing little signs of being tired herself. Nat had hoped that Daisy’s excitement would make her burn out and sleep part of the journey, but if that was going to happen, it clearly wasn’t going to any time soon. She cracked and got her laptop out and put a movie on, before going back to the co-pilots seat to get 86.33 minutes of rest.

“Does she ever run out of energy?”

Nat didn’t let the surprise she felt show on her face. The other woman had remained largely silent during the trip so far. ”Eventually. It’s taking a little longer than I expected today, she’s a little over-excited.”

“Understatement.” May observed, and Nat cracked a smile.

“Is she like this in the real world?” Nat asked, the words tasting strange in her mouth.

“Not as hyper, still lots of energy.”

“You’re allowed to talk to her you know.” Nat pointed out.

A flicker of the eyes was the only surprise May showed “I know.”

“Then why aren’t you?”

“Am I known for talking in this world?”

Nat snorted “Hardly, but don’t insult me, I know when someone’s holding back.”

May didn’t answer for a long time, her gaze fixed on the sky, but Nat just waited her out. She could be quiet too. “She was an adult when she became my daughter. From the sounds of it she didn’t get to have much of a childhood.”

That was.... a lot. The thought that her daughter had had an unhappy childhood made something deep inside Nat cry with despair, and she couldn’t even begin to deal with the feeling. After a moment, she compartmentalised it “That doesn’t explain why you’re so quiet.”

The silence was shorter this time, before May gave a defeated sigh “I’m her aunt here.”

Oh. _Oh_. Natasha couldn’t even begin to imagine what it must feel like to get to see your adult daughter enjoy a childhood but respond to you like a distant aunt. Painful didn’t begin to describe it.

“I’m sorry.” She offered.

May gave the slightest shrug of her shoulders “She seems happy.” She observed. There was an unsaid ‘you gave her that’.

“She is, was.” Nat said, stumbling over the words. She longed to ask what was waiting for them on the other side, but at the same time dared not.

“If you remember this you’ll probably get her and Andy and the others bugging you for tips on raising kids on a military base.” May said.

There was a moment before that sank into her brain and then Nat jolted bolted upright in her seat “ _Daisy has a kid???_ ” she hissed, barely able to keep her voice low enough that her _six year old daughter_ wouldn’t hear.

May snorted again, and Nat could see the amusement in the corners of her face. “Adopted niece.” She corrected, and Nat almost sagged in relief.

“Thanks for the adrenaline rush.” She said sourly.

“You’re welcome.”

Nat didn’t dignify that with a response “How did that happen?” she asked.

“Long story, she has powers and no parents, the caterpillars adopted her and a baby with powers, along with the baby’s father.”

Nat didn’t even know where to start with that sentence. The word caterpillars sounded familiar, as though it was something personally important to Nat, but she couldn’t imagine why. “What powers? Since when do agents have special powers?”

May shot her a look so loaded Nat felt a chill go up her spine “Since the 2000s. It’s a long story. I’m not telling it.”

Nat supposed that was probably fair, given she’d (probably, assuming this was as safe as May seemed to think and they didn’t all end up brain dead) know this herself in a few hours. Silence fell between them again, heavy but not exactly uncomfortable. Nat continued glancing back at Daisy every two minutes or so, finding her daughter drooping more and more with each check. Evidently slowing down for a while and losing her momentum was all Daisy needed to feel how much energy she’d been burning all morning. It had only been six or so hours since Daisy had woken up that morning, but she’d burned considerable amounts of energy through sheer excitement, not to mention how tiring the sheer amount of focus Daisy had spent on not making noise as they sneaked her into and across the Triskelion had probably been. Nat got up and gently picked Daisy up, quieting her sleepy protest that she wasn’t tired and laying her across several seats and strapping her in. She sat with Daisy, gently stroking her hair until Daisy’s breaths evened out and she passed from drowsy into deep sleep. She was keenly aware that this was the last time she was going to get to do this. The last time she’d get to watch her baby girl sink into sleep. The last time she’d get to see her childish face scrunched in sleep, the last time her baby girl would rest her head on her legs and sleep. The thought made her chest ache with a loss so deep it made her breathing feel shallow and heavy.

She was supposed to have time, to have years of it before Daisy grew into an adult and left to make her own way in life. Supposed to have years to give Daisy everything Nat had never had. Instead she’d only had six and a bit years. Instead, in the space of a day, she was having to come to terms with the fact that her daughter was really an adult and had grown up in the system. That she’d failed her child.

They spent the remaining hours of the flight in silence, and they were some of the longest and shortest hours of Natasha’s life.

Daisy slept through landing and didn’t even stir until Natasha gently shook her.

“We’re here sweetheart.” She murmured, letting the words fall off her tongue in the Slavic dialect only she and Daisy spoke, even though they’d been using English for most of the day. Selfishly, she wanted these last moments with her daughter to be just between her and Daisy. Daisy blinked sleepily at her, automatically responding in the same language

“Where are we Mama?”

“A village in Hunan, in China. You came here once before, do you remember?”

Daisy nodded sleepily “Uh-huh. We came to see my dad, but something was wrong and we had to go.”

“Yeah Pauchok, now we’re coming here for another reason. Do you remember what I said about the make believe world?”

“That we’re stuck inside it?” Daisy asked, beginning to wake up properly.

Nat nodded “There’s something here that will let us out of here.”

“Okay, can I have a snack first?”

Nat still wasn’t really sure Daisy understood what was going on. She could barely wrap her mind around it and she was an adult. Daisy certainly had enough imagination to think about it, but she wasn’t sure she’d entirely connected it to the fact of everything they knew wasn’t real, and everything was about to change. “Sure Pauchok.”

May was eyeing them with curiosity from across the body of the plane, but Nat ignored her. Her chest felt tight and her throat thick and loss ached through her entire being. She found the bag they’d packed that morning and she let Daisy pick a snack from it, and then another because Daisy said she was still hungry. Then she sent her to use the loo and tried to pull herself together, tried to compartmentalise the loss and fear burning through her body. What if Daisy hated her in the real world? What if her daughter wanted nothing to do with her?

May was kind enough not to mention how Nat was clearly stalling, but Nat knew the agent must know. She knew that she was only delaying the inevitable, but she couldn’t help it. Natasha hadn’t truly begged for anything since she’d begged Clint for Daisy’s life, and before that long, long ago, but just then Nat wanted to fall to her knees and plead for more time, for this to be real, to have always been real. Instead Nat helped Daisy put her gloves back on and wound her Pauchok’s scarf around her neck and didn’t cry. She took her daughter’s hand and followed May off the quinjet and she did not cry.

Because if she stopped, if she stalled another moment, if she let a single tear fall, she’d break. She’d take Daisy and run and never stop running, or she’d sit and cry until the world shattered around her and they all died. So she took her daughter’s hand and followed Agent May and she did not cry.

Walking through the village in Hunan was like a waking nightmare, memories of when she’d last come here and the memories of when she’d come here for real competed in her mind, echoing around the ghost village that barely seemed to have changed over the years. May examined the doors as they passed them until she finally seemed to find what she was looking for and lead them into a house. Natasha allowed herself a moment to be pathetically grateful that it wasn’t _that_ house, because she didn’t think she could ever set foot in that place again, not for anything.

There was a glowing white doorway in the wall of the house May lead them into, and Nat wanted to make a comment about how cliché it was but her chest felt tight and time seemed to be slipping through her fingers like sand and the words died before they reached her mouth. She wanted to take Daisy and run far, far away but she knew she couldn’t, she _mustn’t_. Instead she said “You go first.” Because this may not be real but she was still the Black Widow and if there was even the slightest chance this was all a trick she had to make sure the person who told her wouldn’t die walking through the door.

May nodded, a silent acknowledgement of what Nat was doing, and a hint of agonised understanding of what Nat was going through in her eyes. “Don’t take too long.” She said, and then she was stepping through the white doorway and a moment later they were gone.

Daisy gave a gasp of surprise and shock and a “Can I try??? Please Mama, please?”

Nat wanted to take Daisy and run, run and run and never stop but instead she crouched down to her daughter’s height and held out her arms for one last hug. Daisy stepped in without hesitation, and despite her excitement she melted contentedly into Nat. She kissed the top of Daisy’s head and stroked her hair and tried to memorise the feeling of her little Pauchok in her arms. “Whatever happens now, I need you to know I love you Daisy,” she said, and somehow her voice came out rough but strong, “I love you so, so, so much sweetheart. Don’t ever forget that.”

“I love you too Mama.” Daisy said, her voice confused but steady. And Nat tried not to think that she might never hear those words from her Pauchok again.

She thought that maybe she should make one last attempt at explaining what was happening, but she didn’t think she had the strength. Instead she picked Daisy up, holding her tightly in her arms and savouring the feel of little arms around her neck. “Ready Pauchok?”

“Uh-huh, shall I count down Mama?”

“Yeah, after three sweetheart?”

“Uh-huh. Three.” Daisy counted, her voice big and dramatic, and her heart broke at how childish it was.

“Two.” Daisy counted, and Nat stood up and she didn’t run and she didn’t cry.

“One.” And Natasha made her legs work, made them carry her closer to that awful glowing white door.

“ **Zeeero!** ” Daisy counted, and her legs moved and everything went white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to end it on another sort of cliffhanger! 
> 
> Only one more chapter to go! Which is kind of sad and kind of nice because I've had bits of the next chapter planned since chapter one, and now I get to write it!
> 
> Comments make me happy :-)


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy and Nat return to the real world

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't proof-read. Sorry. I didn't really have the time to write this, and I definitely don't have time to proofread! Hope it's not full of mistakes...:-/
> 
> Hope you like it!

One moment Daisy was in her Mama’s arms, almost vibrating with excitement as the white door got closer and they reached the objective of her first _real actual mission_ , and the next moment she was blinking her eyes open to see uncle Phil watching her, worry lining his face.

“Uncle Phil?” she asked, confused. Daisy thought uncle Phil was in Washington, not China. Relief spread across Phil’s face, followed by surprise, then hurt, then worry again, and then in a sudden rush everything came back to her.

The Framework. She’d been in the Framework.

It hadn’t been real.

Her dad was saying something, asking if she was ok, but Daisy couldn’t make the words make sense.

It hadn’t been real.

Growing up on the helicarrier, moving to Washington, living with her Mama. It hadn’t been real. None of it had been real.

Daisy shuddered, and it took a moment to realise it wasn’t her that was shaking, but the entire base. She’d lost control. She hadn’t lost control in over two years. But the buzzing sense of her power was suddenly overwhelming, and the building shuddered around her again in another wave of quakes, and when it stopped she could feel pain spreading through her arms.

“Breathe Daisy, it’s going to be ok. In and out, it’s ok, just breathe with me.”

Daisy tried to copy her dad, tried to match his breathing, but everything was blurry with confusion and panic and loss around her.

It hadn’t been real.

It had only been the Framework. But it had felt _so real_.

Daisy hadn’t understood when mama had explained that the world around them wasn’t real. She hadn’t really understood, hadn’t really thought about it very much, too focused on the excitement of going on a mission. She should have listened. Should have prepared herself. Maybe then she wouldn’t be feeling this dizzying confusion and hollowed out shock.

The base shuddered again, worse than the previous quakes and she forced herself to concentrate, to reach for her powers and take control again. The shaking stopped instantly, and she almost cried with relief that she hadn’t lost all her control. When she opened her eyes again the room was suddenly more crowded. She hadn’t even realised she’d closed her eyes.

Uncle Clint was helping her mama out of her chair, the Framework helmet on the floor next to her. Her mama’s face was as blank as Daisy had ever seen it, but her eyes held thunderstorms of emotion. Simmons was standing nearby, fussing over mom and watching mama, clearly waiting to take over and examine her, and Daisy saw Jeni waiting just behind her dad, probably to do the same with her. The caterpillar looked tired and worried and relieved all at once, and Daisy didn’t know how to deal with any of that. A flash of red by the door betrayed Wanda’s presence, and Daisy wondered when she and Clint had come to the Playground. They hadn’t been there when she went into the Framework.

“How long?” she choked, her mouth asking the question even though she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer “How long were we in there?”

Her dad hesitated, and when he answered his voice was too calm, too obviously trying to keep her calm “Three months. How long was it for you?”

Daisy didn’t answer, couldn’t make her mouth form more words. Three months. It felt like seconds. And like years.

“Six years.” Her mama said, and even Daisy couldn’t untangle the emotions in her mama’s voice.

Six years. They’d been there for six years. An entire lifetime for Daisy Romanoff.

There was a stunned sort of silence during which Jeni nipped forwards to grab Daisy’s hand, and Daisy knew the inhuman was scanning her, trying to work out if anything was wrong with her. Daisy pushed her away, shaking her head. There was nothing wrong with her body. Her body hadn’t been taken to a different reality. She tore the Framework helmet off her head, suddenly unable to bear it, and jumped to her feet, the world moving dizzily around her, the ground too far away. She’d been so much shorter a minute ago.

She tried to take a step but crumpled towards the ground, her dad only just managing to catch her in time.

“Easy Pauchok, you need to get used to longer legs again.” Her mama said, and Daisy didn’t register that it wasn’t English until she was replying in the same.

“It’s my body, why won’t it work?” and the Slavic words felt familiar and alien in her mouth, and the dissonance jarred her, another thing her overwhelmed mind couldn’t keep up with.

“It will, just give yourself a moment.” Mama said, and Daisy could see surprise spreading across the other faces in the room. Abruptly Daisy remembered that she hadn’t been able to speak that language before the Framework. She hadn’t spoken a word of it, and then it was all too much, and she couldn’t deal with it and the world was spinning around her as she made her stumbling legs work and fled. Her dad shouted her name behind her but her mom said to let her go, and Daisy could have cried with relief.

\----------------

It was her mom who found her, four hours later. She was curled up on the bed of one of the guest bunks, glaring at the air vent in the wall.

Her mom sat down on the bed next to her, but didn’t speak, giving her space. Daisy rolled over after a moment to lie on her back, letting her see her mom’s face. “I don’t fit in the vents anymore.” She said, and it was such a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but Daisy had been able to fit yesterday, and somehow it mattered.

Her mom raised an eyebrow “Just how much time did you spend climbing around the vents on the helicarrier?”

Daisy felt a smile tugging at her lips “Quite a lot, auntie Maria and dad were always telling us to take the corridors, and mama, uncle Clint, and I were always ignoring them. The kitchen staff used to leave food for us right under the vent so we wouldn’t disturb them so much.”

Her mom snorted, “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Because you’ve met mama and Clint?”

Her mom offered her an amused twitch of the lips, and then a more serious. “How are you Daisy, really?”

Daisy fell silent again, not quite sure how to explain the tangle of feelings in her chest. Her mom waited patiently, the silence comfortable in a way it had almost always been between them, and finally Daisy said “I’m not sorry.”

Her mom gave her a prompting and slightly confused look, and Daisy explained, the words coming out in a guilty rush. “I’m not sorry.” she repeated “It’s been three months and you must have been so worried and you and dad weren’t there, I barely even knew you in the Framework, and I should be sorry but I’m _not_.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” Her mom pointed out.

“But I _should be sorry_.” Daisy burst out. “You must have been worried sick and it’s been three months and I don’t even know what’s happened in that time and you weren’t there and I wish you were but I’m _not sorry it happened_.”

Tears were welling in her eyes and she dashed them away angrily.

“Daisy,” her mom said “no one expects you to be. You got to be a kid. You got to grow up with a loving family; I’d be worried if you _were_ sorry.”

“But you weren’t there.” Daisy repeated, unable to quite articulate what she meant.

Her mom looked at her steadily for a while, and then said “Just because all your family weren’t there doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good experience, nor does it mean you shouldn’t have enjoyed it, nor does it make us any less your family. No one is mad at you.”

“But I didn’t miss you.” Daisy whispered.

“You didn’t know us to miss us.” Her mom countered.

Daisy didn’t answer, and her mom sighed “Daisy, I won’t say I wasn’t worried, or that I don’t partly wish this didn’t happen, but I’m not sorry you got to have a childhood like that.”

Daisy risked a closer look at her mom’s face, searching it for any sign of insincerity, and finding none. She wilted a little in relief, feeling significantly lighter. “So what happened? I mean something clearly went wrong, and other stuff must have happened in the last three months.”

Her mom’s jaw tightened for a moment “AIDA decided to experiment with making minds inside the Framework create their own simulation and managed to make Radcliffe go along with it. AIDA told you both to think of a regret, and then made the Framework fix it. The Framework evolved around you two, wrote its own new code, Fitz said it was like nothing he’d ever seen before. AIDA completely lost your code, and you left the ‘exit button’ behind.”

“A regret,” Daisy echoed, the pieces falling together in her mind “I regretted not getting to grow up with a family, and mama regretted leaving me in Hunan.”

“That would make sense.” Her mom agreed.

“What happened after that?”

“Phil and I got back from our op two days later to find you and Natasha still in the Framework and everyone else panicking. Fitz tried practically everything he could think of, and then called the Avengers. Tony and Wanda flew in, and Tony tried to find you in the code but couldn’t, and Wanda said she couldn’t access your minds. We started really panicking after that. Radcliffe suggested letting AIDA try again, but we refused. A week later we caught AIDA messing watching you two and the Framework code, and doing something with the Darkholm, and that was the last straw. We told Radcliffe to shut AIDA down and take her apart. Instead Radcliffe released AIDA into the outside world. She built a collection of robots to look exactly like our agents and started kidnapping and replacing us. Tony, Mack, Bobbi, Hunter, Fitz, most of the lower level agents, and I were all taken one at a time. AIDA couldn’t replicate powers though, and when Wanda came back to try your minds again she felt something different about everyone elses’ minds and raised the alarm. She and Simmons managed to get down to the Cocoon and barricaded themselves in and called the rest of the Avengers. You missed another team up, from the reports it sounds like it was quite impressive. By the time we dealt with the robots guarding us and broke out, they’d retaken the base and were rounding up the rest of the robots. It took us all another month to track AIDA down and shut her down. She was worse than Ultron, although she killed less people. Radcliffe is dead though, AIDA killed him when he tried to stop her.”

Daisy felt her eyes widening as her mom finished the report. That was a lot. “Is everyone alright?”

Her mom nodded “Shaken, especially Simmons, but they’ve been doing ok. Andrew’s come back for a while to help. Julie asked a lot of difficult questions, but Andy decided that she shouldn’t be told, so we deflected until she dropped it.”

Daisy sat up, alarmed, “Where she and Benjy here when it happened?”

“Lincoln sent them out some escape tunnel at the first sign of trouble.” Her mom’s voice was neutral, but Daisy still flushed. The escape tunnel had been a secret, even Mack hadn’t known. It was an extra entrance and exit made to give a greater sense of confidence in safety for any of the old Afterlife inhumans. Lincoln had asked that only inhumans be told about it, and they’d all agreed to keep it a secret. As it turned out, that had been a good thing, but Daisy has still kept something she officially should have reported from her superiors.

“That’s good.” Daisy said, deciding not to say anything about the tunnel and changing the subject “How did you work out how to get us out of the Framework?”

“Fitz and Tony worked it out eventually, once they could work for a longer stretch of time without a crisis breaking their flow. They managed to recode part of the Framework to send someone else in, and coded in a new exit, and I went in after you.”

“Thank you.” Daisy said, and meant it, even though her stomach ached with the loss of the rest of her childhood. “I’m glad to be back in the real world. I missed you guys.”

“You didn’t know us to miss us.” Her mom said again.

“Yeah, but I kind of miss you now?” Daisy said, her mom’s blank face telling her she wasn’t explaining very well. She tried again “I miss you looking back. You weren’t there and I miss that.”

Her mom still didn’t really look like she understood, but she gave her a fond non-expression anyway. “You should go down to the Cocoon. They’ve missed you.

“Ok.” Daisy said, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and getting up, “Thanks for coming and finding me.”

“Her mom waved it away.”

“Come up to Phil’s office when you come back up, you can debrief then.”

“Copy that.”

\---------------------

Daisy wasn’t sure what she’d expected the Cocoon to be like after, what sounded like a difficult, three months, but it wasn’t the chaos that she walked into. The entrance was a blur of shadow walls, moving, collapsing and reforming, with floating balls of metal flying around in it, crackling with electricity.

In the moment she spent gaping there was a blur in front of her that was almost certainly Pietro, and a faster blur that was probably Elena, both of whom were gone before Daisy could process that they were there. There was a flash of red light somewhere around the corner and a grunt of pain, followed by a laugh, then a panicked yelp and another grunt of pain.

“What on earth is going on?”

There was a beat of dead silence, and then all at once the shadows vanished, the flying metal became solid and clanged to the floor, and the electricity vanished. Daisy marched around the corner to find all her caterpillars and the Maximoff twins standing (or lying on the ground in Pietro’s case) looking some mix of exasperated, embarrassed, guilty, sheepish and brazenly not guilty.

Daisy zoomed in on Jeni, who was the least likely to be involved in whatever this was, and asked “Do I want to know what you guys are doing?”

“Probably not.” Jeni said bluntly, the exasperation on her face not easing up any.

“We were training.” Pietro said, giving his signature cocky grin.

“You were having a pissing contest.” Wanda corrected, flushing.

“You joined in.” Her brother pointed out.

Daisy wasn’t sure whether to laugh or groan. “Again?” she asked, then “No, don’t answer that.”

Elena and Pietro tended to get on like a house on fire. The problem was that there tended to be more fire than getting on. No one was quite sure whether they were best friends or hated each other. This wouldn’t be the first time the two had competed to try to win the argument of whose power was better. Elena was undoubtedly faster, but the fact that she snapped back to where she started was a serious handicap.

Her caterpillars shuffled in place a little, most of them looking sheepish, likely at joining in. Lincoln broke the silence first, saying a little ruefully “I promise we haven’t spent all our time the last few months messing around.”

Daisy laughed, and the tension broke, she flopped down on the nearest seat and said “May said you did really well, and that’s pretty spectacular praise coming from her.”

Grins of pride spread around the room, and Wanda commented “They did, we’d all be dead several times over without them.”

“You say that like you didn’t do just as much.” Sophie said, flopping down on the sofa next to Daisy, evidently deciding that they weren’t going to go back to whatever obstacle course/race/thing they had been doing. “Wanda was the one who sounded the alarm, we hadn’t even realised anything was wrong.”

“And I responded by attacking May and Mack’s LMDs together” Wanda replied, slightly self-deprecatingly, “I’d be dead if you guys hadn’t rescued me.”

“Sounds like you all did amazingly” Daisy said, guilt twisting in her stomach. While they’d been fighting for their lives she’d been enjoying her second childhood. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

Sophie glanced at her watch and gleefully announced “Under 5 minutes! You two owe me ten dollars each.”

Wanda and Pietro groaned aloud “We should have kept talking more.” Wanda sighed.

“You-what?” Daisy asked, feeling increasingly lost and wrong footed. Whatever else had happened in the last few months, it seemed that the Maximoff twins had grown closer to the caterpillars.

Pietro dug some money out of his pocket with good humour. “Sophie bet us you’d apologise for not being available to help within 5 minutes of coming down here. We thought we could control the topic long enough.”

“You-you bet on-am I that predictable?”

“Yes” a chorus of voices answered, and then they burst out laughing, and Daisy felt something in her chest loosen. Her team were ok. It was going to be ok.

“So, tell me what I missed?” Daisy asked, and let herself be given a tangled, out of order, and much interrupted account of the important (and unimportant) events of the last few months.

\------------

A few hours later, Daisy headed back up to the Playground. She hadn’t meant to spend so long in the Cocoon, but by the time they’d gotten through the main events of the last few months Andy had gotten back with Benjy and Julie (Andy had taken them for a walk as soon as Pietro and Elena had started gearing up for another competition), and she couldn’t leave after that. Julie had attached herself to Daisy like a limpet, refusing to let go of her hand for almost an hour, and by that point it was lunchtime, so she’d stayed for lunch. Mack had come down to join them, and lunch had turned into tea and coffee (or juice for the kids) and then that had extended until Daisy regretfully said she really did have to go now and said goodbye. Mack walked back up to the Playground with her, giving her a slightly more sober summary of how the caterpillars had been.

There had only been a few really bad days, but those days had been very bad. Mack had seen security footage from the Playground and Cocoon, and all of them had nearly died taking back the base. With neither Daisy or Mack around to help with strategy or lead, the caterpillars had been cut a little adrift. Elena, Ben and Lincoln had done their best, but they were mainly fighters, and hadn’t studied much strategy, and they all had different ideas of what should be done.The Avengers had been split between searching for Tony and the missing Shield agents and dealing with a crisis of their own, and aside from Wanda and Pietro (who Sophie had gone to fetch after the initial fight ended in a retreat to the Cocoon) hadn’t been able to send help. Added to that was the worry that Andy and the kids would get caught outside the base (by either AIDA or the watchdogs) and the fact that they’d all been terrified that the LMDs in the Playground would unplug Daisy and Natasha from the Framework, destroying their brains, and the fact that they’d had to fight people who looked like their colleagues, and it painted a pretty grim picture of the days before they’d managed to re-take the Playground.

“They were pretty shaken up. Simmons took out LMD Fitz but was a mess afterwards, and Lincoln got shot twice, which left Jeni the only one in any shape to help with injuries, and everybody was at least a bit traumatised. They’ve all been talking with Andrew Garner, but it’s been rough. I haven’t seen them laugh as much as they did today in a while. I think everyone kind of felt like it wasn’t over until we rescued you. They missed ou,”

Daisy tried not to grimace “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t beat yourself up Tremors. It wasn’t your fault. There was nothing you could have done.”

Daisy knew that was true, but it didn’t mean she didn’t feel bad for not being there when it all went FUBAR. “They did so well.” She said instead, letting her pride for the team seep into her voice.

“They really did.” Mack agreed, pride in his own voice. He boosted her up through the trapdoor (the ladder had been a casualty of one of the fights and had never been replaced) and then hauled himself up after her.

“I need to go debrief with dad.” She said, “See you later?”

Mack nodded “Later tremors.”

\---------------

Her mama fell into step with her halfway to her dad’s office, “You look better.” She observed neutrally in Russian.

Daisy replied automatically in the same language, “I am, sorry for running off earlier.”

Her mama shrugged “I bolted only seconds after you did. It was too much, all at once. Only I hid in the vents so only Clint could find me.”

A glance at her mama confirmed the smirk Daisy thought would be on her face, and she pouted “I can’t fit anymore! I don’t know how you and Clint do it, Clint’s bigger than me!”

A shrug “Practice, and it’s not nearly as comfortable when you’re not small. I imagine your mom and dad will be glad you can’t navigate by the vents though.”

Daisy thought of what her dad would say if she started climbing around the Playground vents and giggled, but the sound died in her throat a few seconds later, and silence fell between them, heavy with everything they’d just shared, and the unnamed loss between them.

“What’s wrong?” her mama asked.

“Nothing” Daisy said reflexively.

Her mama stayed pointedly silent, her steps slowing to half the speed. Daisy sighed heavily, “It wasn’t real.” She whispered.

Her mama raised an eyebrow, prompting.

“It, the helicarrier, growing up with you and Clint and Laura and Dad and Maria and Fury, it, none of it was real. It felt, it was, I, it, it was everything I ever wanted as a kid, and it _wasn’t real_.”

Her mama stopped, abandoning even the slow progress towards the office, and grabbed Daisy’s arm to stop her too. Her eyes felt hot with the tears she refused to shed, and her throat ached. “It _was_ real.” She said fiercely. “It _was_. We remember it, so it happened, so it _was real_. I got that, we got that! We got that time together, we got to pull pranks and go to water parks and grow together. We _got that_. It was real Pauchok, it was!”

Daisy’s eyes widened, and she felt a weight lifted off her shoulders. “You’re not sorry either.” She said, the words a relief. Her mama hesitated a second, and then shook her head.

“Clint was worried sick, he won’t admit it but he was, but I can’t be sorry. I got to raise you Daisy! I got to sing you to sleep and teach you to walk and talk and I’m not sorry about that. I got a second chance with you, and maybe it was only in our minds, but it happened, and it was real, and I’ll never regret that.”

Daisy swallowed hard and swiped at her eyes to stop the tears running down her face “I don’t think I ever will either.” She admitted. “I love you mama.”

“I love you too Pauchok. Now come on, or Phil will start thinking your caterpillars kidnapped you.”

“Julie tried to.” Daisy said dryly. “Mack had to rescue me.”

Her mama snorted “How are the caterpillars.”

“They’re doing really well considering. Elena and Pietro were having another of their competitions when I went down there, and the others had all been roped in to make an obstacle course.”

“It’s a miracle those two haven’t broken anything significant yet.”

“It’s a miracle the Cocoon is still standing at all given what we’ve all put it through.”

“Says the person who put the biggest hole in it.”

“Heeey, that was ages ago! And it was Mack’s fault! He said to go full out, how was I to know the walls had a maximum they could withstand?”

Her mama just smirked at her and changed the topic “Is it just me or are Wanda and Pietro spending more and more time here? You’re not trying to poach them are you?”

Daisy shot her mama an incredulous look “Do you _really_ think I want Elena and Pietro on the same team? _Living together?_ ”

From the look of horror on her mama’s face, she was imagining what that would be like. Daisy snorted.

“Yeah, no. Oh hi auntie Maria.”

The woman in question, also about to head up the stairs to Coulson’s office, froze for an instant in surprise. Daisy abruptly realised what she’d just said and remembered the woman had once threatened to use her for target practice if she called her that.

“Uhhh I mean Agent Hill.” Daisy said hastily, just barely resisting the urge to hide behind her mother.

Auntie Maria (Daisy couldn’t really think of her as anything else anymore) just looked at her for a beat, and then sighed in resignation and started up the stairs. “Calm down, I’m not going to shoot you. I take it ‘I’ was around in the Framework?”

Daisy relaxed (she’d been fairly certain it had been an idle threat, but you could never be too sure with Shield agents), and grinned “There’s a high chance I now know a lot more about you.” She teased “Like how good you are at Mario Cart, and how much you used to swear.”

“I wasn’t that bad!” Maria protested, closing the office door behind them.

“Yes, you were” her dad commented, clearly having heard the tail end of the conversation.

“You really were,” Daisy said, “I vaguely remember mama and ‘Uncle Phil’ instituting a swear jar after I learned the alphabet and announced that ‘D is for Damn’.”

Her mom, dad and uncle Clint burst out laughing, and red slowly spread across Maria’s face. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her mama grin.

“When the jar was full so much of the money was yours that we gave it back to you to get some books for Daisy. You came back with a pile of books for her and a book called ‘How to swear in 50 languages’ which got passed round you, me, Clint, Phil, and Fury and we all kept using the words for weeks.”

Daisy choked, gaping at her mama “ _That_ was what those words were?!??!” she finally spluttered, and her mama burst out laughing. “No fair! Why were _you_ allowed to swear?”

“We were adults.” Her mama said smoothly, “Besides, can you imagine what would have happened if you went into school with the kind of vocabulary you picked up off Maria?”

Daisy gave a startled laugh “OK, I see your point. Although signing ‘dumbass’ at people is something I picked up off _you_.”

Her mama grinned unrepentantly, and her dad said in amusement “Why do I think Daisy was a nightmare in school?”

“Hey! I was an angel!” Daisy protested.

Her mama choked “You punched someone on your third day!”

“I didn’t do it again though!”  
  


“No, you just emptied a bottle of water over someone’s head instead.”

“Only once! And he totally deserved it!”

Her mama raised an eyebrow “And all the notes I got sent home about you describing how to stitch up a cut, or telling me you’d refused to speak English for three hours, or you needed to learn to walk on your feet rather than your hands? Not to mention the time I got called up because you climbed up a drainpipe into a second floor window. Or when you brought in _lockpicks_ for _show and tell_!”

“Errr” Daisy said, “When you put it like that… Although really, most of that was the result of five years living on a military base.”

“Never said it wasn’t.” her mama said, “Clint stop laughing, it wasn’t that funny. Not when I had to explain to a teacher why a five year old knew how to pick locks!”

“How did you explain it?” Mara asked curiously.

“With great difficulty.”

“Why don’t we start from the beginning?” her mom suggested, speaking for the first time.

“Why?” Daisy asked “I mean, what happened in the Framework didn’t really affect the real world, did it?”

There was a moment of silence, and then Clint said bluntly “No, but it affected you and Nat, so we want to know. Plus, we were there weren’t we? In the Framework. I, for one, want to know what changed.”

Daisy caught her mama’s eye, who signed quickly ‘I don’t mind, your choice.’

Daisy thought about it a moment ‘I’d like to tell them.’

‘OK’.

“Yessss” Clint cheered.

“Since when could you sign?” her dad asked.

“Since the Framework. I can’t remember learning, I just always could.”

“She picked up all the languages we used around her, although she lost a lot of the pieces of languages she had once I instituted language days.”

“Language days?” her dad asked.

Daisy grinned “Apparently I used to speak like ten languages, but all together, I couldn’t tell them apart. So I kind of spoke one really big tangled language. So mama instituted language days where she and Clint would speak or sign mostly one language each day, and I spoke English with everyone else, so I could learn to tell the languages apart.”

“I thought we were going to start from the beginning?” her mom observed.

Daisy shrugged and flopped down on one of the sofa’s next to her aunt and got comfortable. This was going to be a long story. Her mom and dad stayed where they were, leaning against the desk, and Clint and her mama both grabbed chairs.

“Ok, so, to start with I didn’t leave Daisy in Hunan, I took her with me when I left, which ended up meaning I went rogue from the KGB several years early…” her mama began, and Daisy settled in for the long haul.

A lot of the story was new to Daisy, because she’d been too young to remember when it had happened, and she found herself listening as closely as the rest of the people in the room. Other bits were familiar, but it was amusing watching everyone react. Her mama kept having to go back and tell a bit she’d forgotten, and people kept chiming in with questions and reactions, and uncle Clint went to make hot chocolates part way through, and basically it was remarkably enjoyable to rehash the last six years/three months.

….

“Fury sang nursery rhymes? _Fury???_ ”

….

“Wait, you promised to let me take some potential fall for you and _I believed you?!!!_ ”

“You hadn’t known me for as long yet, and I _did_ promise in the context of coming back to Daisy.

“Did you keep your word?”

“If you stopped interrupting you might find out.”

“That’s a no then.” Maria said dryly.

“Sshhh”

….

“Oh, I’d forgotten how bad you two were at cooking lessons.”

“You were the one who made us go Phil.”

“I didn’t want you to starve to death someday because you couldn’t cook without killing someone!”

“Hey, neither of us ever _actually_ killed someone with our cooking.”

“…”

“Unintentionally.”

“…”

“We weren’t _that_ bad.”

“What mama isn’t mentioning is that she made a scorch mark on our kitchen wall trying to make pot noodles.”

“Daisy! How many of your embarrassing stories would you like me to tell?”

“Shutting up.”

….

“Aww, we played so many more pranks in the Framework. I can’t believe I missed so many good pranks.”

“I am having strange feelings of pity for a virtual version of myself. You must have driven me insane.”

“No comment.”

….

“You asked _me_ how non-abusive parents discipline their kids?”

“Yep. It was really awkward, and we all sat around in your office waiting for Phil to get back so we could ask him, and pretended not to notice the looks he gave us when we did. None of us ever, even indirectly, mentioned it again, we all just pretended it never happened.

….

“Duh Laura and Daisy loved each other.”

….

“ _Laura_ hit you?!??! My Laura? Laura Barton? She _hit_ you?”

“She did attack us with a spoon that time we pranked her cooking.”

“No, she waved it around threateningly and swiped at our arms a few times, she didn’t _slap us!!!_ ”

“Yeah well, I did need some sense knocking into me.”

“Still! That’s an achievement.”

“Yeah yeah”

….

“You taught her to call the _director of Shield_ Grandpa?”

“It wasn’t really me Maria! And I think it sounds cute. Wait, hey! Nat help! She’s got a gun!”

“It’s an icer. And the safety’s on. Stop being overdramatic.”

“Please don’t make bullet holes in my office.”

….

“You don’t need to tell that bit; we all remember Shield mafia.”

“Really? I mean, I got told the story at least ten times, but most of you weren’t there and wouldn’t have heard it for bedtime stories…”

“That training session was infamous Daisy, even I heard about it and I wasn’t even stationed on the helicarrier at the time. Most of the junior agents in the agency were terrified of those two for months!”

“It got us out of training the rookies for ages though, so it was worth it.”

“ _Clint_ ”

“I mean, it was definitely not worth it and we learned our lesson.”

“This is why I don’t miss being your handler.”

“Hey!”

….

“I let you keep a kitten on the helicarrier?”

“I spent several hours telling you how happy you’d make your niece, and reading aloud passages from parenting books about the benefits of having a pet.”

….

“I knew you weren’t going to keep your word! I knew it!”

“Yeah well, you didn’t at the time, you were furious. We had a huge fight about it but Maria got us to sit down and talk it out.”

“No way that’s all there was to it, you’re skipping over something.”

“No I’m not.”

Natasha squirmed under examining looks aimed at her. Unfortunately, everyone in the room knew her well enough to take at least a guess at when she was lying. Finally she groaned “Fine, Maria might have threatened to send us to the corner like two year olds if we didn’t talk about it calmly.” She admitted, determinedly _not_ turning red even as Maria, Phil and Daisy burst out laughing. Even May snorted in amusement, while Clint reddened slightly.

….

“Was I really that bad when I was two?”

“Yes Pauchok, yes you were.”

….

“What do you mean you two _stole a quinjet_ and went on a mission with _chickenpox and a gunshot wound???_ ”

“Umm, mama? She’s getting her gun out again.”

“Again, no bullet holes in my office please.”

…..

“You tried to teach them to cook Phil? I thought you had more sense than that.”

“I was trying to have faith in my agents Mel!”

“That’s not faith, that’s a death wish.”

“ _HEY!!_ ”

….

“You started a _helicarrier wide prank war???_ ”

“No Hill, she said the rookies started it.”

“And you two retaliated.”

“Not really me Phil, and anyway, sounds like it was excellent training for the rookies, and you were always nagging us to train them.”

“…”

“I’m starting to understand why you only had two agents when you were a handler.”

“Hey! Stop laughing Daisy! You’re supposed to be on our side!”

….

“You taught her to call the _head of Shield Pirate?!?!_ ”

“Not really me!”

….

“You played boo on a _shield base_? I thought I trained you to have more self-preservation than that!”

“Apparently it didn’t transfer into the Framework. I don’t remember doing it anyway.”

“ _I_ remember. The level of stress I carried around until you finally learned your lesson not to do it… It’s a miracle nobody killed you by accident!”

“Uh, sorry?”

….

“Clint stop laughing! It’s not funny!  
  


“I-It-t-t issss, ‘sh-sharing is c-c-caring’” Clint choked out.

“She wanted to play with my mission gear! It wouldn’t have been funny if I _had_ let her run around with my widow bites!” Nat paused for a moment, actually thinking about it “Ok, it might have been a little funny. Stop looking so alarmed, I’m not going to give Julie weapons to play with, give me _some_ credit!”

….

“You _agreed_ to play hide-and-go-seek? With a two year old that can climb through air-vents???”

“Trust me, I didn’t make that mistake twice.”

….

“You taught my daughter to pick locks, aged _three?!?!!_ ”

“It wasn’t really me! You wouldn’t kill me for something I didn’t actually do would you? _Would you?_ ”

….

“You went to a water park without me??”

“Virtual-you came with us.”

“…”

“Oh stop pouting, we can go again sometime.”

“Oooh, we should make it a day trip! Bring the caterpillars and calling it team bonding.” Daisy said.

“Bags not being in charge of that.” Phil, May and Maria all said at once.

“We’re all adults.” Natasha pointed out “We don’t need someone to come and be in charge.”

For some reason, none of the three most senior agents looked in the least reassured.

….

“Awww, you sound so cute. Playing agent at four years old.”

“Oh yeah, it was my favourite game. I kept copying the drills in the gyms and pretending to be a secret agent in enemy territory. Grandpa, err I mean Fury, was great with it. We had an ‘Agent’ game where he’d teach me to sneak around his office and dust for fingerprints and walk silently and things like that. Mama didn’t like it much though.”

Nat spluttered “Do you realise how many times you almost seriously hurt yourself?!?!”

“I wasn’t that bad.”

“Daisy, I only knew 6-year-old you for a day and I know you were that bad.”

“Hey! And you have to admit I was cute.”

May inclined her head “Little bit.”

“I was even cuter playing the agent game. Cute is useful.”

Phil, May, Clint and Maria laughed, and Nat moaned aloud. “None of you are understanding the horror of the agent game. Yes, she was cute, but she wanted to be _just like me_! And Maria got her a _mini-ops-suit!_ All she wanted was to grow up to do the same kind of _completely insane_ _high-risk ops_ Clint and I did.”

Daisy snickered “I guess some things never change.”

“It’s not _funny!!_ ”

….

“Director Fury taught her to pick pockets?”

“Come on Maria, you worked for the man for years, you know that’s not that far out for him.”

“She was four.”

“In fairness, I was a very good enabler.”

“Why does that not surprise me?

“Because you’ve met me mom?”

….

“Wait, Fury really said that! That’s an _open invitation_!”

“Oh, we made him regret it.”

“It was hilarious, we raided his office and swapped all his stuff for pirate themed stuff and Mama or Clint, I forget who, managed to get into his bunk and swap all his clothes for a pirate costume. And then there was the ostrich, you never did tell me how you managed that.”

Natasha smirked mysteriously and didn’t answer, and May, Phil and Maria stared at her in horror.

….

“Wait, that can’t be right, we shouldn’t have had Cooper for years!”

“I guess I was just so cute you had to have your own kid sooner!”

“Stop grinning Pauchok, the chaos you could make could have just as easily put Clint and Laura off kids for life.”

“Except Clint taught me how to make a good part of that chaos.”

“Good point.”

“Stop smirking Clint, that wasn’t a compliment.”

“Yes it was.”

“Don’t encourage him!”

“Sorry mom”

….

“Wait, wait, mama, you’re skipping over everything that happened house hunting, and all the decorating.”

“Wait, what happened house hunting? You didn’t test the windows to see if they were bullet proof did you?”

“I’m not an idiot Phil! I know how to be a civilian. Daisy on the other hand went running into the flat and shouted back in obvious amazement that ‘It has windows’. _Stop laughing_! It wasn’t funny! The estate-agent called CPS!”

“OK, that one was on me, but it was totally your job to pick out stuff to decorate.”

Nat cracked a smile “I’ll give you that. I still wasn’t very good at choosing stuff then, and when we went to pick stuff out I didn’t know what to pick, and I froze, so Daisy asked me what spies and agents would pick, so we picked lots of furniture that could be turned into a weapon or barricade or hiding place. And then a couple of weeks later once it’s all set up Daisy pulls Maria around the apartment describing exactly why we picked each thing! Honestly Pauchok, she really didn’t need to know why we picked everything!”

….

“You set fire to pot-noodles??”

“They really didn’t need to know that Pauchok.”

“I disagree, we definitely needed to know that.”

“Shut up birdbrain.”

….

“You told me you ate what?”

“Special brownies, it wasn’t my fault! I didn’t know that meant pot brownies!”

“You must have given me a heart attack.”

“Only a little one.”

….

“You hacked your school computers aged 5?”

“It’s not that young to hack something that easy. I did it at 8 in this world with less teachi…I mean, I never hacked my school. Ever. Nope.”

“You know what, I’m not going to ask.”

“Probably best.”

….

“You made a civilian friend? Aww that’s so sweet, baby assassin’s first civi..aaahhh”

“ _ **Natasha!!!**_ _We do not throw knives!!!_ ”

…

“Oh, that’s, that’s rough.”

“I still think I should have stayed home with Daisy.”

“And I still think you should have gone and dealt with the crisis.”

….

“You just started stitching yourself up in front of her? That poor civilian!”

“In hindsight, I could have eased her into it more gently.”

“ _Nat_!”

….

“You tried to do _what_ on the swing?”

“Um, flip it? I-was-six-mom-please-don’t-kill-me-for-having-no-common-sense.”

“Breathe Pauchok. And I thought I was a strict parent.”

“You taught her to hack, I don’t think you can call yourself a strict parent.”

“…No comment.”

….

“You didn’t neuter the cat?”

“Shut up birdbrain.”

….

“…and then I realised it wasn’t real, and May already told you the rest.”

“So what happens to the Framework now?”

“Fitz shut it down, and destroyed the code, it’s too dangerous to leave lying around.”

“Probably for the best. It’s kind of scary how real that place felt” Daisy said, shivering, and Natasha inwardly agreed. The thought that her mind had been messed with again sent icey shivers down her back. She didn’t want to think what could happen if someone else got their hands on the technology. Like Hydra. Natasha didn’t even want to think about the brainwashing potential of the Framework.

Really, they’d been very, very, very lucky, and as it was nothing had happened to make Natasha really regret the time she and Daisy had spent in the Framework. It had been a second chance of sorts. A second chance to spend Daisy’s childhood together. A second chance for Daisy to grow up with a family that had never just been virtual.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe it's finished!!!!!! Sorry if I ended it abruptly, I wasn't really sure where to finish it.
> 
> Comments make me happy!


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